Bend It Like Beckham Director: Gurinder Chadha Country: UK Year: 2002

March 2003

Hi this is Gurinder Chadha, Director of Bend it like Beckham. I welcome this opportunity of e-speaking to you all on the forthcoming release of my movie in Canada beginning on March 12th in Toronto.

I know a number of the Indian community has seen the film on pirate copies and I guess the huge success of the film in the UK, Australia and India spurred you all on to check it out in this form, but I do urge each and every one of you to please see the film properly in the theatre the weekend it opens.

This is critical as it sends the right signal to the Industry that we
have a voice, we can vote with our feet and if we all support films from our own filmmakers we get to see more of these kind of films.

My own Asian community in the UK did just that, we had a record breaking opening weekend box office and now it is much easier for me to finance my next film and for other Asian film makers to get their pictures made because the UK industry knows there is an audience out there.

So you see it does work. Please come out and bring your parents, kids and grandparents to be a part of a celebration of our community. It is a warm, funny, family film with no sex! My mother would kill me if there was!

The film has touched the hearts of people all over the world from every country...we have managed to take Aloo Gobi global...let's do it together for Canada too.

All the best wishes and thank you.

Gurinder Chadha

More info: www.FoxSearchlight.com/benditlikebeckham

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South Asian filmmakers are a small, but growing, minority in the American and Canadian film industries and it is crucial that the South Asian community come out to theaters to support our own movies. On a regular basis, we are depicted in stereotypical roles such as cab drivers, convenience store clerks, goofy immigrants, and terrorists. The best way to counter these images and stereotypes is for us to go out and make our own films and tell our own stories.

But it doesn't stop there. The desi community also needs to do its part by coming out to the theaters and supporting these South Asian films. When these films draw large audiences, it sends an important message to the big studios and makes them realize that we as South Asians make up an important segment of the movie-going public. This in turn will encourage them to help make and distribute more films by Indian filmmakers and our voices in American and Canadian society will become louder and more important.

Bend It Like Beckham has been embraced by audiences in the United Kingdom and India and we are very proud to release it in the U.S. and Canada. It tells the inspirational story of a teenage Indian girl who challenges conventions and strives to succeed in a non-traditional field. I hope you support this film and come out to your local theater with your friends to see it.

- Gitesh Pandya, Indian-American film producer