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Vancouver Asian Film Festival Screening: You Can't Curry Love

You Can’t Curry Love, a timely and provocative short about homosexuality in India, will be screening in the 2011 Vancouver Asian Film Festival on Friday November 4th at 5pm at the Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas, in the shorts program titled Unlike No Other.  The 23-minute film has previously screened at 60+ film festivals on five continents.

In the film, a handsome London-based South Asian man visits India for the first time for work and falls for a local guy there, making him rethink his feelings about his heritage and his priorities.

Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Reid Waterer, a veteran of 100+ film festivals, You Can’t Curry Love is a thought-provoking romance with spectacular scenery and surprising authenticity.  This east-meets-west, boy-meets-boy love story is about a country and culture just beginning to tackle its feelings on homosexuality. 

Among the film's unusual insights into India is a look at the transsexual “Hijra” community,  as well as a thoughtful dissection of the country's views on masculinity, the caste system, Bollywood, and its rapidly rising world profile. 

The film has won seven Audience or Jury Awards, both in LGBTQ and mainstream film festivals, often highlighted for its rarely-seen subject matter.

A five year obsession with Bollywood, India's booming Hindi-language film and TV industry, first piqued director Reid Waterer's interest in India and its culture.  Then a 2008 trip through the country inspired him to make You Can’t Curry Love.  Waterer is an award-winning editor of movie preview trailers and TV ads for big studio movies like Mamma Mia!, The Hangover, Michael Clayton, Enchanted, and Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

Shot in India and Los Angeles, the short features authentic Bollywood pop music throughout.  The cast is truly international, coming from India, Australia, South Africa and the United States, and includes Rakshak Sahni, former star of the Bollywood serial KKAVYANJALI.

Waterer has said "One of the reasons I made this film was to create a story with images of gay Indian men who are not stereotypical, tragic or negative.  I also thought it would be interesting to explore the struggles of Non-Resident Indians to try to reconcile their ethnic background to their sometimes highly Westernized personal identities."

While not South Asian himself, Waterer's film is the culmination of several years of research, and a collaboration with several South Asian actors to create the final script. 

The director will be in attendance at the Vancouver screening for a Q&A session along with other filmmakers.

The Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas are located at 88 West Pender, 3rd Floor.

For more information about You Can’t Curry Love or to view the film's trailer, visit the website.

For more information including how to purchase tickets, visit the festival's website.

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