Film on Little India to premiere on Canada’s 150th anniversary
TORONTO: More than four decades after Canada’s most iconic desi enclave came into existence in Toronto, the commercial district will be celebrated by a documentary to be screened and streamed nationally on July 1, the 150th anniversary of the country’s confederation.
Little India: Village of Dreams, which pays tribute to the Gerrard India Bazaar, will premiere on public broadcaster TVO on Saturday. Fittingly enough, it was directed by Mumbai-born director Nina Beveridge, who lived in the Toronto neighbourhood for nearly 20 years.
The enclave came into being after Gian Chand Naz decided to set up a cinema to screen Bollywood movies in 1972. He had a dream of “building an Indian community” and “felt a movie theatre would be a magnet, so he set about to finance and get the theatre going,” Beveridge said in an interview.
Naz’s vision translated into reality as the area along Toronto’s Gerrard Street turned into Little India.
The nearly hour-long documentary looks at what Little India is today, even as smaller stores shutter due to gentrification and the desi community is now largely concentrated in the city’s suburbs.
Beveridge’s documentary is a narrative seen from the perspective of four families who have stores in the area – a tale of entrepreneurship, focusing on the children who were born in Canada and are now involved in running the family business.