Focus on India, a special theme this season at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, begins next week with Growing Up in India, a film and photo exploration of Indian culture from a youthful perspective.

“The opportunity to delve into the artistic trends of such an important nation and culture fits perfectly with the Mondavi Center mission to expose our region to the best from diverse world cultures,” said Don Roth, the center’s executive director.

He said Focus on India began as a partnership with faculty and community members, especially Sudipta Sen, a professor of history and director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, and Sundeep Dugar, an alumnus, “who have been able to put us in touch with leading artists working in India today in dance, photography and film.”

Sen said the films and photographic exhibition “bring to light India’s next generations and their journey into a new world of rapidly changing outcomes.”

The photographic exhibition comprises the works of three Indian artists: Dinesh Khanna, who curated the exhibition, and Prashant Panjiar and Anusha Yadav, explroing different aspects of Indian society and culture.

The films:

• Salaam Bombay! — Mira Nair earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film in 1989 for her stark look at the lives of Bombay’s street children. Left by his family at a young age, Krishna learns to survive on the streets alongside prostitutes and drug addicts, hoping to save enough money to return home.

• Pink Saris — An unflinching and often amusing look at the all-female vigilante Gulabi Gang in northern India and the gang’s charismatic leader, Sampat Pal, who acts as judge and jury for girls and women who are being abused by outlawed patriarchal traditions and the caste system.

• Udaan — The story of Rohan who, after being abandoned for eight years in boarding school, returns to the small industrial town of Jamshedpur and finds himself closeted with an authoritarian father and a younger half brother who he did not even know he existed.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: Growing Up in India

Photographic exhibition: Nov. 14-Dec. 18, in the Mondavi Center’s Yocha Dehe Grand Lobby. Open one hour prior to Mondavi Center performances, and during the performances, to people with tickets to those performances.

Film series, in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre:

• Salaam Bombay! — 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 14, preceded by a program (6:30 p.m.) with Tula Goenka, who worked on the film. She is an associate professor of television, radio and film at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University.
• Pink Saris — 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15.
• Udaan — 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15.

UPCOMING: Focus on India continues with dance and music performances in the coming months.

• Kalanjali: Dances of India and Rachana Yadav — 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 21.
• Zakir Hussain and Masters of Percussion — 8 p.m. Thursday, March 22.
• Anoushka Shankar: Flamenco Gypsy Journey — 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 17.

TICKETS are available online, or in person or by telephone at the Mondavi Center box office, (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787. Box office hours: noon-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and one hour before ticketed events.

MORE INFORMATION

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