Category: Film Screening

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Screening of Nandita Das’s Manto – December 16, 2025 * 6:00 pm

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Nandita Das’s 2018 film, Manto, about the life and trials of the modernist Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto, on December 16, 2025 from 6:00-8:30 pm at the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427).  Anyone interested in translation studies, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcome to join the screening.

“Born in Punjab in 1912, Manto was one of most controversial writers of the age, eloquently crafting empathetic and shocking short stories about those living on the edges of society. Many of his best tales were inspired by his time in what is now Mumbai between 1936 and 1948. He would recall these years as the happiest of his short life, with stories that portrayed a very different side to India, embracing both beauty and ugliness… While best known for his tales of partition such as ‘Toba Tek Singh,’ he also masterfully captured the underbelly of [Mumbai], telling stories of pimps, gangsters, salon madams, and prostitutes living in cramped chawls. His stories were frank, forthright and imbued with a sense of moral outrage that aimed to give a voice to the voiceless. Notoriety inevitably followed him, and Manto faced trial six times on charges of obscenity for his short stories…

“‘He’s so relevant to today, and it is my way of responding to what is happening now,’ explains [Director Nandita] Das, speaking from Mumbai. ‘His empathy was very deep for those that exist on the margins of society – especially for women and sex workers – and no one in India was writing about that at the time’… Das was fascinated by the fact that Manto wrestled with the theme of identity all his life. It was this that inspired her to make the film. He was a Muslim living in a cosmopolitan city also populated by Sikhs, Christians, and Jews. It was a place where textile workers huddled in cramped tenements while film producers puffed on fat cigars in luxurious surroundings. Manto lived and breathed a city of contrast and contradiction, much of which is still reflected in its modern incarnation, Mumbai.” – Joseph Walsh, The Guardian

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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Screening of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider – December 10, 2024 * 6:15 pm

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2014 film, Haider, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, on December 10, 2024 from 6:15-8:45 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427).  Anyone interested in translation studies, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcomed to join the screening.

“The Bollywood director Vishal Bhardwaj has made his name by adapting Shakespeare into film, using the plays to reflect the violence and vicissitudes of modern India. Maqbool, an adaptation of Macbeth, was set in the Mumbai underworld; Omkara transported Othello to the feudal badlands of northern India. His latest effort, a loose adaptation of Hamlet called Haider that takes place in Kashmir during the turbulent 1990s, has become one of the most acclaimed and contentious Bollywood movies of the year…[In the film] Haider is sent away by his parents to Aligarh, a university town in north India, to shelter him from the violence overtaking Kashmir. The movie’s plot is set in motion when he returns to his homeland to search for his father, who has been abducted by the military. Through Haider’s search, the movie plunges into a looking-glass world, where lies and deception are common, and the government has abandoned human rights and the rule of law to crush the armed insurgency.” – Vaibhav Vats, The New York Times

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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Screening of Saim Sadiq’s Joyland- May 14, 2024

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Saim Sadiq’s 2022 film, Joyland, on Tuesday, May 14, 2024 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The screening will take place in Seminar Room 427 (Ludwigstr. 31, Munich), and anyone interested in South Asian aesthetics, literary theory, or art-house film is welcome to join the screening. 

“This year’s Queer Palme winner, and the first ever Pakistani film in the Cannes official selection, Saim Sadiq’s debut impresses with its sensitive storytelling and vibrant visuals… Tartly funny and plungingly sad in equal measure, this is nuanced, humane queer filmmaking, more concerned with the textures and particulars of its own intimate story than with grander social statements — even if, as a tale of transgender desire in a Muslim country, its very premise makes it a boundary-breaker.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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Screening of Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahānī – May 7, 2024

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Sujoy Ghosh’s 2012 film, Kahānī (Story, कहानी), on Tuesday, May 7, 2024 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The screening will take place in Seminar Room 427 (Ludwigstr. 31, Munich), and anyone interested in South Asian aesthetics, literary theory, or art-house film is welcome to join the screening. 

“The sudden disappearance of an IT contractor in Kolkata triggers a riveting, labyrinthine puzzle, replete with duplicitous spy shenanigans, in Kahaani. Versatile [thespian] powerhouse Vidya Balan follows up her daring vamp in The Dirty Picture with a dazzling portrait of a determined London-based woman traveling to the subcontinent in search of her missing husband. Buttressed by compelling [performances], this adroit thriller makes the occasional misstep but maintains momentum and credibility. Forgoing Bollywood’s standard musical numbers, the pic could potentially cross over to wider [audiences] with an appetite for thrillers.” – Russell Edwards, Variety

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

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March 4-7: AWP 2020 Events feat. Rita Banerjee

If you are planning to attend the AWP 2020 Conference in San Antonio, TX from March 4-7, 2020, stop by these events featuring the Vermont College of Fine Arts and the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.  Author Rita Banerjee will not be in attendance at AWP 2020 due to health concerns but the following events will take place, unless they are noted to be cancelled below:

Friday, March 6, 2020, 11 am – 12 noon:
(Cancelled due to health concerns)

Rita Banerjee will be doing an author signing for her books Echo in Four Beats and CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing at the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s AWP Bookfair Table at T2164!  Come stop by and say hello!

Friday, March 6, 2020, 5:30-7:30 pm:
(Will take place as scheduled)

Interested in learning more about the residential MFA in Writing & Publishing and Certificate in Publishing programs at the Vermont College of Fine Arts?  Stop by the VCFA Reception on Friday, March 6 and say hello to MFAWP Director Rita Banerjee!

 

Friday, March 6 | VCFA Reception
Ocho @ Hotel Havana
1015 Navarro Street
5:30-7:30pm – Cash bar, hors d’oeuvres

Saturday, March 7, 2020, 9-10:15 am:
(Cancelled due to health concerns)

Rita Banerjee will be presenting on Burning Down the Louvre (2020), a documentary film on race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France that she is co-writing with essayist David Shields at the 2020 AWP Conference during the following panel featuring Jericho Parms, Rita Banerjee, and David Shields:

S122. Dismantling the White Imagination: On Intimacy in Creative Nonfiction

AWP Conference * Saturday, March 7, 2020 * 9:00-10:15 am
Room 205, Henry B. González Convention Center
900 E Market St, San Antonio, TX 78205

Creative nonfiction requires intimacy and vulnerability. Within a genre where the relationship between “I” and “you” is always on the line, how can we as writers forge connections between self and other? How can we reimagine whiteness and disrupt the marginalization of nonwhite voices? By exploring the electric space of collaboration and conversation, panelists will discuss how writers of color and white writers can make otherized identities familiar and new American narratives viable.

Saturday, March 7, 2020, 5-7 pm:
(Will take place as scheduled)*

Join the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop for our offsite reading at Rosella Coffee House (203 E Jones Ave, Suite 101) in San Antonio, TX! Featured readers include Rita Banerjee, Madeleine Barnes, Alex Carrigan, Kristina Marie Darling, Charlene Elsby, Adilene Hernandez, Tim Horvath, Samuel Kóláwọlé, Rachel Kurasz, and Mari Pack! Come celebrate with a gorgeous night of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and speculative writing! *Please note that some authors may not be in attendance due to health concerns.

March 4-7: Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Table (T2164!):
(Will take placed as scheduled)

For those writers, editors, and lit fans traveling to the 2020 AWP Conference (March 4-7) in San Antonio, TX this week, come stop by the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s AWP Bookfair Table at T2164!

Course registration for our 2020 Spring in New Orleans Writing Retreat (March 19-22) and Summer in Paris Writing Retreat (July 16-21) is now live! Apply by March 10 for our NOLA Retreat and May 30 for our Paris Retreat on cww.submittable.com.  Our 2020 award-winning faculty includes essayist David Shields, playwright Stephen Aubrey, poet Diana Norma Szokolyai, and poet and essayist Rita Banerjee.

March 4-7, 2020: VCFA Booth (1164 & 1165)
(Will take placed as scheduled)

Interested in learning more about the MFA in Writing & Publishing and Certificate in Publishing programs at the Vermont College of Fine Arts?  Stop by the Vermont College of Fine Arts’s booth (1164 & 1165) at the AWP Bookfair and say hello to Director Rita Banerjee and get a free copy of Hunger Mountain from Editor and Fiction Faculty Erin Stalcup!

 

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AWP 2020 Panel: “Dismantling the White Imagination: On Intimacy in Creative Nonfiction” feat. Emily Arnason Casey, Rita Banerjee, Jericho Parms, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, & David Shields * Sat, March 7 * 9 – 10:15 am

Rita Banerjee will be presenting on Burning Down the Louvre (2020), a documentary film on race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France that she is co-writing with essayist David Shields at the 2020 AWP Conference during the following panel:

S122. Dismantling the White Imagination: On Intimacy in Creative Nonfiction

AWP Conference * Saturday, March 7, 2020 * 9:00-10:15 am
Room 205, Henry B. González Convention Center
900 E Market St, San Antonio, TX 78205

Creative nonfiction requires intimacy and vulnerability. Within a genre where the relationship between “I” and “you” is always on the line, how can we as writers forge connections between self and other? How can we reimagine whiteness and disrupt the marginalization of nonwhite voices? By exploring the electric space of collaboration and conversation, panelists will discuss how writers of color and white writers can make otherized identities familiar and new American narratives viable.

Participants

Moderator:

Emily Arnason Casey is the author of Made Holy: Essays. Her writing has appeared in the Normal School, The Rumpus, Hotel Amerika, Briar Cliff Review, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at the Community College of Vermont. www.emilyarnasoncasey.com

Rita Banerjee is the director of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and author of Echo in Four Beats, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, and A Night with Kali. Her work appears in Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, VIDA, and LARB.

Aisha Sabatini Sloan is the author of The Fluency of Light: Coming of Age in a Theater of Black and White and Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit, which won the CLMP Firecracker Award for Nonfiction. She is currently the Helen Zell Visiting Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of Michigan.

Jericho Parms is the author of Lost Wax. Her essays have appeared in Fourth Genre, The Normal School, Hotel Amerika, Brevity, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches at Champlain College.

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Reality Hunger (30 “best books of 2010” mentions),The Thing about Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), The Trouble with Men, and Nobody Hates Turmp More Than Trump. He is an NBCC finalist and his books appear in twenty-four languages.

For more information, please visit the AWP 2020 Conference website here.

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April 25: Workshop for Film-in-Progress at the Savoy Theatre * 1:15-3:15 pm

Writers Rita Banerjee and David Shields will present a Workshop for their Film-in-Progress at the Savoy Theatre in Downtown Montpelier, VT from 1:15-3:15 pm on Thursday, April 25. Members of the community and writers and artists from the Vermont College of Fine Arts are welcome to attend.  A description of the film follows below:

Shortly before the November 2015 terrorist attacks, David Shields, who is Jewish, and Rita Banerjee, who is Bengali, come to Paris to try to understand the current American racial cataclysm from a French perspective. David and Rita try to discuss skin color, class, gender, privilege, and art—only to discover that they disagree about everything. Back in the States, they discover that the space between any two people is the source of all hate and all love.

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Screening of Kamaleswar Mukherjee’s Chander Pahar (2013) – July 5

ChanderPaharRita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Kamaleswar Mukherjee’s 2013 film, Chander Pahar (Moon Mountain), on Tuesday July 5 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427).  The screening is part of the course Genre and Modern South Asian Literatures at LMU.  Anyone interested in genre, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcomed to join the screening.

Chander Pahar (Moon Mountain), a beloved Bengali adventure novel written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay in 1937, is not an easy book to bring to the big screen. Key plot points include an erupting volcano and a prehistoric-looking beast, not to mention deadly spiders, snakes and lions. The story follows Shankar (Dev), a young Indian man beset with wanderlust. He can hardly believe his good fortune when he lands a job as a station manager along a Ugandan railroad, which means he’ll be living alone in the wilderness of Africa visited by people only when the train makes its brief daily stop. The latter half of the movie involves Shankar’s friendship with another adventurer, Diego Alvarez (Gerard Rudolf), and their journey to find riches in the Richtersveld, a mountainous desert region in South Africa.   Director Kamaleswar Mukherjee shot the film primarily in South Africa, and the vistas and animals are breathtaking. – Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post

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Screening of Srijit Mukherji’s Hemlock Society (2012) – June 17

Hemlock2

Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Srijit Mukherji’s 2012 film, Hemlock Society, on Friday June 17 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427).  The screening is part of the course Genre and Modern South Asian Literatures at LMU.  Anyone interested in genre, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcomed to join the screening.

Hemlock Society depicts the wear and tear of the city life and how mechanical we are becoming. Meghna (Koel Mallick) is down and out after she finds her boyfriend cheating. Her relationship of many years crumbles within a few minutes. The matter is made further worse with her loosing her job and he bitter relationship with her father who has married someone else after her mother’s death. Desperate and disgruntled Meghna contemplates suicide. As she is about to gulp some sleeping pills, she is intruded upon by a strange man who calls himself Ananda Kar (Parambrata Chatterjee). Ananda tells her that she has every right to commit suicide but warns her that a failed suicide is much worse than death in itself. She offers to train her on how to commit suicide professionally at his school, which he calls “The Hemlock Society.”  Shaken and confused, Meghna agrees and sets off on a journey with this strange man not knowing that the journey she embarks upon will lead her to self discovery, happiness, and above all, love. ~ Aambar.

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Screening of Tapan Sinha’s Kabuliwala (1957) – May 3

kabuliwalaRita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Tapan Sinha’s’s 1957 film, Kabuliwala, on Tuesday May 3 from 6-8:30 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427).  The screening is part of the course Genre and Modern South Asian Literatures at LMU.  Anyone interested in genre, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcomed to join the screening.

Rabindranath Tagore’s story Kabuliwala, set in the early twentieth century Kolkata, is about a little girl Mini and a merchant from Afghanistan affectionately called the “Kabuliwala.” Tapan Sinha’s adaptation of Tagore’s story explores the bonds of friendship, affection, and parting as Mini and the Kabuliwala strike up an unexpected rapport, and demonstrate how relationships can transcend the borders of race, religion, and language.