I for India

I for India

I for India

In 1965, Yash Pal Suri left India for the UK. The first thing he did on his arrival in England was to buy two Super 8 cameras, two projectors and two reel-to-reel recorders. One set of equipment he sent to his family in India, the other he kept for himself.

For 40 years he used the camera to share his new life abroad with those back home - images of snow, miniskirted ladies dancing bare-legged, the first trip to an English supermarket. These taped thoughts and observations provide a unique chronicle of the eccentricities of his new English hosts.

Meanwhile, back in India, his relatives responded with their own 'cine-letters', telling tales of weddings, festivals and village life. As time passed and the planned return to India became an increasingly remote possibility, the joy and curiosity of the early exchanges give way to the darker reality of alienation, racism and a family falling apart.

This film, made by Suri's daughter Sandhya Suri, presents a poignant and beautiful distillation of her family's home movies - a bittersweet time capsule of loss, discovery, racism and belonging.

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