BOMBAY

Director Mani Ratnam is that magic, exhilarating bridge between “movies” and “cinema.” He uses popular, mainstream subjects to create joyous, exuberant, fantastic films that speak to everyone on a multitude of levels. Passions ran high when BOMBAY went into release last year in India, but audiences applauded and attended in record numbers and the film has gone on to become a worldwide favortie. A tale of forbidden love in a time of sectarian violence, BOMBAY is one of the most controversial films ever made in India. The forbidden love, in this case, is between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman; the violence is the savage 1992/93 rioting in teeming Bombay. The film launches into a hard hitting and brutal examination of the city's riots and the effects of race hatred on ordinary families. Happily, the era's terror manages to reunite their two families and, somehow, good comes out of bad.