Tag Archive for 'Smile Pinki'

Reason to smile

Published on February 27, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

As Megan Mylan’s Smile Pinki, the story of a poor Indian village girl whose cleft lip made her a social outcast, wins an Oscar for the best short documentary, journalist Anubha Sawhney Joshi, who was born with a double cleft on the lip, tells her story in this beautiful piece in The Times of India:

Friends were okay, but would the boy one liked never ever look my way because of the defective lip? The first one didn’t. Neither did the next few. Some said they didn’t really mind when the truth was that they did. Some who actually didn’t really mind were not my type. I had my standards, cleft or no cleft, and so what if they were double! The first kiss something i spent long days and unending nights fretting over was silly, hurried and uneventful as first kisses usually are. More

Indi sweep at the Oscars

Published on February 23, 2009 in Entertainment, India and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

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Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Vikas Swarup’s novel, Q&A, set in Mumbai, sweeps the Oscars with eight awards including best picture and best director. Music maestro A.R. Rahman scores a double win (best original score and best original song for Jai Ho along with Gulzar). And Resul Pookutty takes home a statue for best sound. “In 80 years of Academy history no Indian technician has been nominated for an Oscar. I’m the first to be nominated, and the first to win,” he is quoted saying backstage by BBC.

A list of the Super Eight bagged by Slumdog:

1. Best Movie

2. Best Director (Danny Boyle)

3. Best Original Song (A.R. Rahman for Jai Ho)

4. Best Original Score (A.R. Rahman)

5. Best Film Editing (Chris Dickens)

6. Best Sound Mixing (Ian Tapp, Resul Pookutty)

7. Best Cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle)

8. Best Adapted Screenplay (Simon Beaufoy)

And not to forget, India-inspired Smile Pinki bags best documentary!

To understand what makes Rahman a global tunesmith, click here.

To read stories on Slumdog and Smile Pinki previously published on AW, please hit search.

The dark Oscar horse

Published on February 20, 2009 in Art and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

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Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire may be the favourite at the Oscars, but Smile Pinki, a short documentary on an Indian girl born with a cleft lip, is also in the race for a trophy. Smile Pinki -- a 39-minute documentary by American director Megan Mylan -- chronicles the story of eight-year-old Pinki’s journey from being a social outcast in her village to her acceptance -- and even deification -- by society.

More here and here

And an interview with he film’s producer and directer, Megan Mylan (photo right), in The Indian Express:

“Whenever I go to a new place I make it a point to do some research. I learnt to do a lot of namaste and make eye contact because these people had never seen a camera or a foreigner. I was helped by a friend and social worker Nandini Rajwade, who translated everything for me,” explains Mylan, who shot the film in Mirzapur in UP over a three-week schedule in March 2007 and in a Government hotel in Varanasi. “I survived on packed rajma chawal. Each day we would travel two hours from our five-star hotel in Varanasi to the village. We did not want to be a burden on the villagers by staying with them,” she explains. More: