By Pierangelly Del Rio Martinez

The Beyond Babel Film Festival concluded its fourth edition this week with a free screening of the film English Vinglish.

The Bollywood production directed by Gauri Shinde and starring Bollywood’s veteran megastar Sridevi, follows the story of Sashi, a stay-at-home mother and owner of a small laddoos business, who feels ashamed of her inability to speak English. Often mocked and taken for granted by her husband and daughter, Sashi feels self-conscious of her lack of English in a country where this language has been made a lingua franca. However, everything changes as Sashi travels to New York to attend her niece’s wedding and starts taking English language classes.

Doctor Carmen Herrero, principal lecturer in Hispanic studies and a specialist in Hispanic cinema at Manchester Met University and the event’s coordinator, spoke to Humanity Hallows about the Beyond Babel Film festival and its vision.

She said, “The idea is always to bring a multilingual film, yesterday it was Mandarin and Spanish and the first day was Arabic and French. We brought this year the theme of migration and we’d like to give the opportunity to people to be brought together and see how films can help us to learn about cultures and to respect each other.”

She later spoke to attendees about the importance of English Vinglish and its selection to become part of the festival. Herrero added, “Sometimes migration is perceived in a very negative way. We wanted to bring films that explore the diversity of migration and the reasons why people move to another country. And not just to set a black and white picture of migrants.”

Doctor Herrero, who is also the director of FLAME (Research Group for Film, Languages and Media in Education) shared her thoughts about films and how these can be used not only as a source of entertainment, but as tools to create empathy and widen the public’s perceptions of the world and an ideal tool for language learning.

She said, “I think films brings many feelings. I think is a good way of engaging and making people feel what others are going through and it’s entertaining as well. It has all the components to help us to understand the other point of view of the people belonging to other cultures. Manchester is an ideal place to bring that because is a multilingual, multicultural place.”

Sheraz Ali, Urdu lecturer at the University of Manchester, introduced English Vinglish, briefly. Dr Ali provided background context for the film. Despite not very known for Western audiences, English Vinglish was received with rage reviews in India, quickly becoming one of the top ten movies in 2012. It’s also notorious for its female director, Gauri Shinde, who was inspired by her mother to write the movie and did so to express her frustration at the use of English to politicise or shame non-English speakers. Dr Ali also explained what makes English Vinglish so distinctive. He said, “This film did wonders and offers a lot to talk about.” The film is often showcased for students because of its many lessons. “Life begins when you step out of your comfort zone. It’s never late to start something new,” he added.

English Vinglish proved to be a fun, warm story full of dramatic and touching moments. The mistreatments and humiliation Sashi, the protagonists, had to endure at the hands of New Yorkers and her own family due to her lack of English had the audience at Manchester Met raging. The lack of empathy and understanding for someone trying to learn English was not an exaggeration of the movie but a reality that many migrants and foreign visitors like Sashi endure daily.

However, English Vinglish was also full of hilarious and endearing moments such as Sashi’s enrolment in the English language academy and in interactions with her classmates, who struggled to take a grasp of the language.

As professor Ali mentioned, English Vinglish conveys several lessons, among them the importance of the family, tolerance and empathy, but above all self-confidence. Audiences were witnesses of Sashi’s journey from a shy woman who quietly endured humiliations and mistreatments from her family, to a person capable of standing for herself and able to demonstrate her true worth. It definitely left a feel-good vibe by the credits roll.

After the screening’s ending, Dr Herrero invited the public to comment and share their thoughts about the movie. A member of the audience commented how the movie was “very moving and quite different from the usual Bollywood film”.

The Beyond Babel Film Festival is part of the RAH! 2018 programme. The next events in the series include ‘The Erotic Cloth: Seminar and Book Launch’ on Wednesday 14th February and ‘A Shropshire Lad in Ancient Rome: A. E. Housman and Ancient Homosexuality’ on Wednesday 21st February.