Pyaasa
Directed by Guru Dutt ⎮ Music by S. D. Burman
India ⎮ 1957 ⎮ Fiction ⎮ 146 mins ⎮ Hindi and Urdu w/English subtitles
Host Venue: Main Street Landing
This event is part of Global Roots Film Festival: Why Sing, Why Dance?
Festival Passes are available HERE. It is highly recommended to purchase a Pass although individual tickets are also available. If you purchase a Pass you need not book individual screenings – just bring your pass to the door. Seating is on a first-come first-served basis.
Passes :
General Admission – $40
VTIFF Patron Members – $32
Students – $20
VTIFF All Access Members – FREE.
In newly-independent India (1947), Hindi cinema, with its rich use of music and dance, would become the entertainment of choice for millions in and beyond the subcontinent. The movie musical would propel a massive phenomenon, the studio system that would go on and outsell Hollywood ….. Bollywood, where song and dance would connect with a population of hundreds of millions, only 20% literate and still recovering from post partition civil war.
Set in Calcutta, West Bengal, the film tells the story of Vijay, a struggling poet trying to make his works known in post-independence India, and Gulabo, a prostitute with a heart of gold, who helps him to try and get his poems published.
“Possibly one of the most remarkable transpositions of poetry on screen. Dutt plays the poet himself and when he says the verses, he actually sings (using the beautiful voice of Mohammad Rafi). It’s just out of this world. More than once I’ve had tears in my eyes listening to the audio tape I bought in Delhi in the late eighties.” ~ Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), Personal Shopper (2016).