BHAJI ON THE BEACH
BHAJI ON THE BEACH
Blackpool has long been a traditional summer destination for Britain’s working class: a neon-lit seaside resort packed with fairground attractions and food snack stalls, bustling and cheerful. This is the destination for a group of women from Birmingham’s Indian community.
Brought together by a local activist, women and girls of different ages, from different communities and with different life experiences board a coach to spend a day away from the troubles of everyday life. This one day becomes a chance to reflect, open up to others and reconsider the choices they have made; for some, it will prove life-changing.
Gurinder Chadha’s feature debut – she was the first female director of Asian heritage to make a feature film in Britain – was a manifesto of sorts. Above all, it gave a voice to womanhood, revealing the diversity of their perspectives and attitudes, as well as the variety and gravity of the problems the female protagonists had to face. Chadha handles her film with an easy, unhurried pace, giving her characters time to rest and talk. The trip to Blackpool offers a double escape: from class-based reality, but above all from the stereotypes and expectations imposed on them as wives, daughters and sisters by men, particularly those within their own cultural communities.
BHAJI ON THE BEACH also heralds the director’s distinctive creative strategy – all her future films will explore what it means to exist within two cultures simultaneously, and how the identity of British people of Asian descent is shaped.
Text: dr Karolina Kosińska
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