NYIFF 2018

Post-screening discussions for all three with James Ivory and Madhur Jaffrey
Auditorium 5, Village East Cinemas, 2nd Ave @ 12th Street, NYC.
Remastered prints courtesy Cohen Media

Shakespeare Wallah	Heat and Dust	Autobiography of a Princess
Tuesday May 8th @ 7 pm Post-screening discussion with Director James Ivory & Actor Madhur Jaffrey Tickets: $20; $18 IAAC Members & students w/ID.	Wednesday May 9th @ 7 pm Post-Screening discussion with director James Ivory and actress Madhur Jaffrey Tickets: $20; $18 IAAC Members & students w/ID.	Thursday May 10 @ 7 pm Post-Screening discussion with director James Ivory and actress Madhur Jaffrey Tickets: $20; $18 IAAC Members & students w/ID.

SYNOPSIS

In 1960s post-colonial India, Tony Buckingham (Geoffrey Kendal) and his wife, Carla (Laura Liddell), are the British actor-managers of a troupe of English, Irish and Indian actors who travel the country mounting performances of Shakespeare’s works. The Buckinghams find themselves grappling with a diminishing demand for their craft as the English theatre on the subcontinent is supplanted by the emerging Bollywood film movement. Meanwhile, Lizzie Buckingham (Felicity Kendal), the couple's daughter, falls in love with Sanju (Shashi Kapoor), a wealthy young Indian playboy who is also romantically involved with the glamorous but vain Bollywood movie star Manjula (Madhur Jaffrey). The Buckinghams must weigh their devotion to their craft against their concern over their daughter's future in a country which, it seems, no longer has a place for them.

India | 122 min | English
Directed by James Ivory
Producer: Ismail Merchant
Screenplay: Original Script by Ruth Pawar Jhabvala
Year: 1965
Cast: Felicity Kendal, Madhur Jaffrey, Shashi Kapoor
Genres: Drama
Winner: Silver Bear Award for Best Actress (Madhur Jaffrey), 15th Berlin International Film Festival
Trailer: https://youtu.be/33CCBkosSBw

Heat and Dust follows a pair of intertwined stories about two Englishwomen living in India more than fifty years apart. In 1923, Olivia (Greta Scacchi) shares an uninspired marriage with Douglas Rivers (Christopher Cazenove), an English civil servant in the colonial India of the 1920s, which leads to her embarking on an affair with Nawab of Khatm (Shashi Kapoor), a romantic but decadent minor Indian prince. In 1982, Anne (Julie Christie), Olivia's grand-niece, travels to India to unravel the mystery of Olivia’s life, which her family regarded as "some thing dark and terrible." While there, Anne discovers—and then seems to repeat—the scandal that her independent-minded ancestor caused two generations before, prompting Anne to re-assert her own independence five decades later.

India | 122 min | English
Directed by James Ivory
Producer: Ismail Merchant
Screenplay: Ruth Pawar Jhabvala (based on a Booker prize winning novel by Ruth Pawar Jhabvala)
Year: 1983
Cast: Greta Scacchi, Julie Christie, Shashi Kapoor
Genres: Drama, Romance
Trailer: https://youtu.be/kVAqXzxl8BI

On the anniversary of her father's death, an Indian princess (Madhur Jaffrey) celebrates his memory in her London apartment by having tea and showing a selection of home movies to her guest, her father's old tutor Cyril Sahib (James Mason).

Director: James Francis Ivory worked together with the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the German writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. His first films are all set in India and are very much influenced by the style of Satyajit Ray and Jean Renoir. After this period, he filmed three stories in New York and then dedicated his work to the great works of the English literature which made him internationally famous. Examples of this period are The Europeans and The Bostonians by Henry James, Jane Austen in Manhattan by Jane Austen, Quartet by Jean Rhys or A Room with a View and Maurice by E.M. Forster.

UK | 59 mins | English
Directed by James Ivory
Cast: James Mason, Madhur Jaffrey, Keith Varnier.
Screenplay: Ruth Pawar Jhabvala
Year: 1975

Trailer: https://youtu.be/WIpAcKlIM6M

Madhur Jaffrey Dubbed the “Queen of Screen and Cuisine,” Indian-born Madhur Jaffrey is an actor, food and travel writer and television presenter. In 1955, Miss Jaffrey studied at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art alongside contemporaries Diana Rigg having won a scholarship there after an audition. After two years in London, she answered an invitation to teach pantomime at St. Michael’s Playhouse in Winooski, Vermont, and then ventured to New York City, where she performed in Off-Broadway productions and short films and toured the United States as a lecturer on poetry. Madhur’s acting breakthrough came in the Merchant Ivory film Shakespeare Wallah, for which she won the Silver Bear Award for Best Actress at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival in 1965 and critical notice at the New York and London Film Festivals. She went on to act in three more Merchant Ivory productions—The Guru (1969), Heat and Dust (1983) and Cotton Mary (1999)—and holds the distinction of having introduced James Ivory and Ismail Merchant to one another in 1959 when she lived in New York. Other films Madhur has appeared in include Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Wolf (1994), Flawless (1999), A Late Quartet (2012) and, most recently, Prime(2005), Today’s Special(2009), Hiding Divya(2010). Frequently recognized for bringing Indian cuisine to the Americas with her debut cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973), Madhur has written more than a dozen cookbooks and appeared on several related television programs. In 2004, she was named an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and India.
Reviews:
Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala team finds its groove with 1965's 'Shakespeare Wallah'
Shakespeare Wallah - variety.com
‘Shakespeare Wallah’ Restoration: Merchant Ivory Classic Gets Bollywood-Infused New Poster
A Shashi Kapoor movie you must see
Merchant Ivory’s Comic Elegy “Shakespeare Wallah” Offers an Inimitable Midsummer in India

Shashi Kapoor Born in Calcutta, India in 1938, during the British Raj, Shashi Kapoor is a member of the famed Kapoor family, a film dynasty in India’s Bollywood cinema. A prolific stage-trained actor, Kapoor spent much of the early part of his career performing in his father Prithviraj Kapoor’s company’s plays and films and his actor-director brother Raj Kapoor’s movies. He has appeared in more than 200 Indian films, but remains best known across the world for his performances in Merchant-Ivory’s productions, including The Householder (1963), Shakespeare Wallah (1965), Bombay Talkie (1970), Heat and Dust (1983) and The Deceivers (1988). Kapoor has also worked as a film director and assistant director in the Hindi cinema. Retired since 1999, Kapoor was awarded the 2014 Dadasaheb Phalke Award, making him the third member of his family to receive the highest award in Indian Cinema, following his father and brother.

Reviews:
Heat and Dust - rogerebert.com
SCREEN: 'HEAT AND DUST,' SET IN INDIA
Heat and Dust - slantmagazine.com
From the Archive: Greta Scacchi captivates in Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala's 1983 India-set drama 'Heat and Dust'

Review: Autobiography of a Princess -
merchantivory.com

Director: James Ivory was born in Berkeley, California and educated at the University of Oregon, where he majored in Architecture and Fine Arts. His first film, which he wrote, photographed and produced, was Venice: Theme and Variations (1957), a half-hour documentary made as a thesis film for a degree in cinema from the University of Southern California. James Ivory received the 2018 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name.

In 1961, Ivory teamed up with Ismail Merchant to form Merchant Ivory Productions, with their films for the most part directed by Ivory and produced by Merchant. Ivory’s first theatrical feature for the newly formed company was The Householder (1963), based on an early novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Jhabvala also wrote the script, her first in what was to become an ongoing collaboration with Merchant Ivory. The Householder holds the distinction of being the first Indian film to be distributed worldwide by a major American Company, Columbia Pictures.