2008 Films

The Tailor / Lakshmi and Me

• The Tailor

  
  2007. Spain. 32 mins. Directed by Óscar Pérez. Produced by Óscar Pérez, Mia de Ribot.

  Mohamed is surely Barcelona’s most disorganized tailor. The tense encounters that unfold inside his tiny shop reveal a man who is, depending on one’s perspective, either beleaguered by demanding customers or openly hostile and incapable of relating to anyone, including his loyal employee Singh. This casually observant film finds absurd comedy in these quotidian moments of incivility and limns a stark portrait of a soul frayed at the edges. TW

• Lakshmi and Me

  
  2007. India. 60 mins. Directed by Nishtha Jain. Produced by Smriti Nevatia.
  North American Premiere

  What begins as an unsentimental representation of a domestic worker by her privileged feminist employer soon becomes a double portrait of enormous emotional and political consequence. While the film captures the courage and dignity of these women as individuals, it is through their relationship that it offers us a critical yet deeply human depiction of Indian society at large. Beyond that, the film brilliantly explores the symbiotic roles of mistress and maid, filmmaker and subject, speaker and listener, to raise key global issues as diverse as the politics of domesticity, gender and class relations, ethics, and documentary art. Lakshmi and Me challenges a new generation of feminists to ask how those women who have been invited to sit at the table can allow other women to remain seated on the floor. PL

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