Negative capability

2night the Indian filmmaker Onir was on campus, presenting his pioneering 2004 film, "My Brother Nikhil," the first major movie from the subcontinent to focus on HIV/AIDs and male homosexuality. Sensitive, compassionate, tasteful - skilled filmmaking. It was Onir's first feature-length film, and presages a very promising career in the making. I admire films that consciously strive to educate and inform their audiences, particularly when they do so with artistry and restraint.

Set in Goa, "My Brother Nikhil" is based on a real incident by which the first prominent Indian to contract HIV/AIDS was kept in an isolation ward for three months before public pressure was sufficient to force the authorities to release him. It was moderately Bollywood - with some musical interludes - but more realistic and sober than most Bollywood films that I've seen. On a modest budget. Rather at the level of a superior "cable network" film in the US, I would say.

This was a program that had been planned and arranged by Dr. B., who was a tireless promoter of global diversity and raising awareness of HIV education around the world.

Nashini and I went out with Onir and a group for dinner afterwards at the hotel pub. I asked the filmmaker what his original inspiration was to become a director. Interesting response. He actually grew up in Bhutan, where films were a rare treat, but as a boy he remembered being taken to see the George Cukor version of "David Copperfield". He that the Dickens adaptation - with its iconic images - triggered his lifelong passion to bring powerful stories to the screen. So it goes!