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Film: Namaste Papaji

Film: To Serve One's Country

November 2002 Artist Residency

APICC presents
United States of Asian America 2003 Festival

Film Shorts by Young Asian Americans

To Serve One's Country		Namaste Papaji		Namaste Papaji

SAN FRANCISCO, California - The Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center presents it's first ever Film Festival - "A.K.A. 'Pelikula "O-ri-en- ta-l???"' A challenge of stereotypical notions through an eclectic selection of some of the West coast's premiere Asian American short films. The event is part of the 'United States of Asian America 2003 Festival'.

Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (SomArts), 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, California 94103. Thursday May 15 and Friday May 16 @ 8:00pm. Admission: $8.00. Reservations recommended, please contact: voice: 415 864 4120; fax: 415 522 0136; electronic: info@apiculturalcenter.org; or see the entire program at www.apiculturalcenter.org

Featuring new film/video works by videos from AsianPrincess, Greg Manalo and the Queue, and Kristina Sheryl Wong. Also featuring work by Vincent Au, Kavita Bali, Don DeLeon, Harjant Gill, the Mail Order Brides, Wes Kim, and Brian Seiichi Tsukamoto. Curated by Matthew Abaya.

Local artist/ filmmaker Kavita Bali shall have two films 'Namaste Papaji' and 'To Serve One's Country' screened as part of this festival.

TO SERVE ONE'S COUNTRY is a short animatic film. It is a powerful, poetic testament to the loss that war creates for all those involved, no matter which side one is fighting on. It is a story of a family's loss, as a young father innocently and patriotically journey's into a war he does not understand. (Writer, Director: Kavita Bali; Running Time: 3 minutes; Year Completed: 1992, 2002 (final edit)

The film was created in 1992 in Los Angeles while experimenting with the visual potential of a new Hi-8 video camera. The basis for the film is a visual book which was created in 1986 during Kavita's studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. One Sunday afternoon she was bored, so she took out the camera and created her very first animatic film. It took about 7 hours to shoot. She created all the fades and cuts with the camera's internal editing capabilities to save on money. Months later, she added music at a production studio, the only real cost other than the single Hi-8 cassette and some xeroxes created for credits at Kinkos.

Kavita's commentary on war here is stated simply, she said: "In the end, there is only human loss of innocent young people and a post mortem realization that neither side wins from such violence."

NAMASTE PAPAJI (Welcome Grandfather), filmmaker Kavita Bali takes us on a lyrical, poetic journey of friendship across generations providing a foundation for courage and acceptance. At age 7, Monica's isolated world is magically opened up by her grandfather's tales awakening a sense of heritage and the passing on of tradition in a sometimes chaotic modern world. The coolness of upstate New York is warmed by the flurry of imagination in this simple visual poem. (Writer, Director: Kavita Bali; Running Time: 15 minutes; Year Completed: 1997)

Namaste Papaji was a film written in 1994, shot in 1995 and final edited in 1997. The film made it to the top level of finals in the Dramatic Original Screenplay student category at the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival in 1997, where there were more than 4500 entries from 26 countries. It premiered in New York City at NYU's First Run Film Festival also in 1997. This is the first time Kavita will be able to see the film on a large screen, she had already moved to Silicon Valley to work for a high tech corporation as a Sr. Art Director when her film premiered in NYC.

KAVITA BALI is a visual poet, conceptual adventurer and the Founder of UrbanPeacock.com, a combination design studio and online community for globally shared creativity.

She is currently the Artist-in-Residence at WORKS Gallery, where she in the midst of creating a new series of paintings and preparing for her upcoming performance "Urban Peacock Tales: An evening of Art, Poetry and Universal Journeys through Time'. This event shall be premiering on Thursday May 15th at WORKS Gallery, a cutting edge contemporary art gallery located in downtown San Jose.

Kavita has a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (1987), has studied Photography in Switzerland and Film at NYU's Graduate Program. She is an active member of the Asian American Women Artists Association and has exhibited / lectured on her art and films across the country including at APAture 2001, the World Affairs Council, Seattle's Northwest Asian American Film Festival and at the Dallas South Asian Film Festival.

In November 2002, she was a Guest Artist in Residence at the University of Nebraska, where she lectured on her filmmaking, visual arts, poetry and 15 year design career. Her last adventure was her debut acting performance in a play by Summi Kaipa 'Triptych: Stories of Desi Women' staged in January 2003. Kavita, a Bay area resident, moved from Allahabad, India to the U.S. in 1971 at the age of six.

To learn more about Kavita and her art, films and poetry, please visit: http://www.urbanpeacock.com or E-mail: kavita@urbanpeacock.com

APICC if funded by the California Arts Council, Consortium of Cultural Centers, Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund, San Francsico Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the WA Gerbode Foundation.