8. East is East (1999)

Language: English

Director: Damien O'Donnell

Running time: 96 mins

Starring: Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jordan Routledge, Archie Panjabi

Company: Assassin Films/BBC/FilmFour

The setting is Salford, c.1970 and the industrial suburbs of Manchester are now peopled by the erstwhile subjects of the Raj and their descendants. The film then sets forth to chart the careers of a Pakistani shopkeeper, his memsahib wife and their brood of progeny by way of a comedy of manners updated to fit the realities of fin-de-siècle multicultural Britain. Arranged marriages set up by neurotic but affectionate elders are dourly resisted by the younger generation more comfortable with sexual experiences across gender and race barriers. Sparks are certain to fly and they do and the film swings frenetically from one comedic crisis to another if only to end happily. The film marks the continuing interactive experimentation between British television, the British Asian stage and the cinemas of South Asia and Britain that has become one of the important currents of contemporary global cultural media.