Mother India
Mehboob Khan, 1957, 174 min

Introduced by Ranjit S. Ruprai and followed by discussion with film studies teacher and researcher Dr. Kulraj Phullar

Mehboob Khan takes an individual woman’s story of rural poverty and hardship (Nargis as farmer Radha) and makes it worthy of a grand epic. Radha’s struggle against continual tragedies throughout her life, yet surviving with dignity intact, symbolises the effort of a newly independent nation within international structures that still favoured former colonial powers. The title intentionally references and rebukes Katherine Mayo’s American book of the same name: an anti-Indian diatribe from 1927 arguing against self-rule. 30 years later, Khan’s proud Mother India became India's first submission and nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

---

I Am Cuba
Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964, 141 min

Introduced by Ranjit S. Ruprai and followed by discussion with film studies teacher and researcher Dr. Kulraj Phullar

Soviet film director Mikhail Kalatozov’s poetic anthology is a visually audacious panorama of Cuban life and its hardships in the approach to armed revolution. Individual stories of poverty and resistance are given the epic treatment with dazzling scenes and breathtaking camera movements; revolutionary cinema in form as well as content. Was this perhaps too technically accomplished to connect with Cuban audiences looking for something genuinely local and imperfect? The film did not find an audience in Russia either and only made its way to international audiences in the 1990s with the support of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford

---

Programme supported by Film Hub London: www.filmlondon.org.uk/filmhub