India in a Day
DOCS D: Richie Mehta. India/United Kingdom. 86 min. Sep 9, 6 pm, Scotiabank 1 Sep 11, 9:15 pm, Scotiabank 1 Sep 16, 3:45 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2. Rating: NNNN
Ridley Scott’s crowd-sourced In a Day series lands in India and finds an ideal curator in Toronto’s own Mehta.
The project, backed by Google, solicited thousands of hours of user-generated videos, all shot on October 10, 2015. The kaleidoscopic results are a rush of boisterous images and sounds from the rural to the futuristic, embracing the jarring disparities between India’s castes and classes while searching for reasons to celebrate the country’s rapid evolution.
The initiative is geared to crowd-pleasing and uplift, but Mehta and some fine contributing voices refuse to look away from those who traditionally get left out: women, the poor and the transgendered.
