Hidden Gems marks 10th year with searing tale of the end of British Raj
Calgary’s Hidden Gems Film Festival has reached a milestone. The little Indian film festival is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
For founder and director Niru Bhatia, that’s quite an achievement.
“Most film festivals don’t even make it past a third year,” she says.
The main 2018 Hidden Gems festival will be held the last weekend of April and first weekend of May, but Bhatia wanted to do something now to thank her loyal membership and, hopefully, to help that base grow: She wanted to find a film experience to share with them.
“It is getting more and more difficult to find something really special. Every time I had an idea, I checked Netflix and would have to check it off my list. So much is available there.”
Then Bhatia recalled the excitement in Britain over the BBC series Indian Summers when it began airing in February 2015. She says the opening episode was the highest-rated original drama in the U.K. in the past two decades.
“It was Channel 4’s most expensive drama ever and it aired in the coveted Downton Abbey slot.”
Indian Summers is the lush, explosive story of the decline of the British Empire and the birth of modern India, seen from both the British and Indian perspectives.
At the heart of the 10-part series lies a tangled web of passions, rivalries and clashes presented in such a way that it becomes a mystery as well. It is set in 1932 as India dreams of independence and the British desperately cling to the power and prestige they once had.
The story plays out in a small British enclave called Simla, in the foothills of the Himalayas where it is cooler in the summer months.
Until Indian Summers aired, the 1984 British TV series The Jewel in the Crown was the most heralded series about the British in India.
“The Jewel in the Crown put the British on a pedestal, but Indian Summers is far more critical because it looks at both sides of the issues through the film’s major characters,” Bhatia says.
The Hidden Gems Film Festival will presenting Indian Summers two episodes at a time, beginning Jan. 28 at 2 p.m. at the Alberta College of Art and Design, in the same building as the Jubilee Auditorium at 1407 14th Ave. N.W. Memberships for Hidden Gems are $25. Single tickets are $15, available at the door.