A Sari Tale

Directed by Premika Ratnam

Canada, 1991 (children's / fiction, 15 minutes, colour, English)

Film Description:
"Geeta, an Indian girl, is embarrassed when her friends come to see her and they see her mother in a Sari. Geeta's embarrassment and resentment grows when her teacher wants her to wear a Sari for their costume party on Halloween. What Geeta does is she tries to explain Divali, the Hindu festival of lights."
-- WorldCat (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Written by:	Premika Ratnam
Production Company:	TVOntario Productions

(sources)

Quote about A Sari Tale

"There are fascinating sequences in both films. In A Sari Tale, we see a mother empathizing with her daughter's embarrassment with Indian culture—and, yet, feeling palpable, profound sadness about it when her daughter is out of view. In Hair Scare, the nagging question 'What's underneath the turban, eh?' is answered. We see Amar, after he's had a shower; combing his long hair, gathering it and tying it with string; we see his father help him with the cloth that is tied around the bunched hair; we see the father and son discuss their common experience with turbans and being teased. Both videos have aired repeatedly on TVOntario and on the Knowledge Network in British Columbia. Deservedly so: they tackle the wide ranging issues of racism sensitively, facing head-on the stereotypes that all Sikhs are terrorists and that all Indian parents are insensitive to their Canadian children's needs. What is more, they portray youth issues in a way that the widest possible audience of children and parents can relate to. And, best of all, the avoidance of neat endings: the filmmakers acknowledge that, by definition, dilemmas never afford an easy way out. "
-- Sanjay Khanna (source)

Bibliography for A Sari Tale

Articles from Newspapers, Magazines, or News Websites

Khanna, Sanjay. "Video in review: A Sari Tale; Hair Scare." Rungh: A South Asian Quarterly of Culture, Comment and Criticism, vol. 1, no. 4, January 1993.