Rajan Khosa’s delicate, contemplative first feature centers on Pallavi, a singer of classical Hindustani music, whose career and personal life are upended when her mother dies. Despite a throat specialist’s assurances, Pallavi is unable to perform until she connects with a mysterious beggar girl possessed of a beautiful voice, who flits in and out of her life like an exquisite, tattered butterfly. In Time Out London, Geoff Andrew called this subtle meditation on the nature of art “a deceptively simple piece of work, as elegant, sensuous and resonant as the lovely sounds heard throughout.” Dance of the Wind won the Audience Award at the 1997 London Film Festival. (India, 1997, 85 minutes.) In Hindi with subtitles.

Let’s Go to America / Chalo America

Director Piyush Jha’s comedy centers on three college kids bred on Western pop culture who are obsessed with migrating to America, and perpetually dream up weird schemes to get there. Their plans lead to them being trapped in numerous hilarious situations. After plenty of mishaps, the trio comes to realize that the American dream is just an illusion—or do they? (India, 1998, 119 minutes). In Hindi with subtitles.

 The Stranger / Agantuk

Satyajit Ray’s last film is a fascinating amalgam—a family drama that is also a film of ideas, a wryly observed commentary on Indian society and a bit of a mystery. Set in Calcutta, middle-class housewife Anila enjoys a predictable, comfortable life with her husband and young son. One day, out of the blue, Anila receives a letter from a man claiming to be her uncle Mitra, a restless soul who left home 35 years earlier when she was just a baby. He writes that he is taking a short breather from his travels and hopes that he can count on the family’s “traditional Indian hospitality” for a few weeks. The stranger arrives and immediately captivates the Anila’s son with tales of American Indians, but her husband suspects the worst. And good-natured Anila is torn between her impulse to welcome “Uncle Mitra” and her own doubts. The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson wrote, “The Stranger shows all the virtues of a master artist in full maturity . . . a beautiful film, and a fitting swan song.” (India, 1992, 120 minutes.) In Bengali and English with subtitles.

The Rule / Sasanam

Striking for its realism and visual beauty, director J. Mahendran’s drama The Rule is set in a small town in a Chettinad community. It centers on a loving couple, Muthiah and Visalakshi, who take in both a charming young dancer named Saroji and her mother after they have fallen upon hard times. The arrival of these outsiders scandalizes the villagers, especially when the relationship between Muthiah and Saroji deepens. Reviews of the film praised Mahendran for his courage in defying the rules of commercial cinema and making a strong film about real people and real emotions. (India, 2005, 141 minutes.) In Tamil with subtitles.

Pather Panchali

Satyajit Ray pawned his wife’s jewelry and struggled for four years to raise the funds to make his first film, Pather Panchali, a beautifully observed and poetic account of life in a Bengali village. A lyrical, loosely structured drama, it centers on a family made up of a struggling writer who is often absent from the family, his wife, who carries the burden of providing and caring for their children Durga and Apu, and a senile aunt. Now acknowledged as a masterpiece of humanist cinema, it was the first chapter in Ray’s Apu Trilogy, of which Roger Ebert wrote, “It remains in the mind of the moviegoer as a promise of what film can be. Standing above fashion, it creates a world so convincing that it becomes, for a time, another life we might have lived.” (India, 1955, 115 minutes.) In Bengali with subtitles. This film was preserved by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive. Print courtesy of the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection at the Academy Film Archive.

Reaching Silence / Nishabdha

For director Jahar Kanugo, Delhi today is a city where noise is omnipresent, whether on the streets or at home. His film’s protagonist, 30-year-old Sarit, feels besieged by the din. Searching for silence, he escapes to his village in Bengal. Peace descends on him; his friends in the village are sympathetic and he even finds a new love. In fact, it is as if he is living out the romantic poem which speaks of a “yellow-green afternoon,” when the village is filled with “the smell of crushed lime leaves, of raw mangoes roasted” and one can see “the ripples when the fish leap.” But his obsession with silence shatters this fragile peace and all he can do is escape—right back to Delhi. (India, 2005, 93 minutes). In Bengali with subtitles.

The Mourner / Rudali

This stunningly photographed drama set in rural Rajasthan introduces viewers to the Indian tradition of professional mourners—women who are paid to theatrically lament and weep at funeral rites. The story follows the unlucky Shanichari, a lower-caste woman who, after a life of hardship, finds herself unable to cry a single tear—not when her abusive husband dies, nor when her simpleton of a son marries a prostitute. But when a mourner hired by the town’s richest man arrives and befriends the outcast Shanichari, her path opens before her. Director Kalpana Lajmi combines pointed social commentary with Bollywood style—a gorgeous palette, haunting songs, and dramatic vistas—in this memorable film. (India, 1993, 128 minutes.) In Hindi with subtitles.

Five by Four

Celebrated writer Roopa Swaminathan plays with alternative forms of storytelling in her English-language debut feature Five By Four. It’s a lively tale of a close-knit gang of five women, all intelligent and very aware. Swaminathan structures the film through four episodic stories that show how interconnected their lives become over their ten years of friendship. (India, 2003, 90 minutes). In English.

Salaam Bombay

Before Slumdog Millionaire won a king’s ransom of Oscars, Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) captured the teeming streets of Bombay and the lives of its forgotten children in her much acclaimed debut feature Salaam Bombay. The story of Krishna, who works as a tea boy, and the improvised family he creates with a pimp, a prostitute, and a bunch of other strays who share the alley where he sleeps, Salaam Bombay owes its authenticity to Nair’s background as a documentary filmmaker. Praised by Leslie Camhi in the Village Voice for “the toughness and vitality” of its “perfect” cast (made up of both established Indian stars and non-professionals), the film won the Audience Award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. (India, 1988, 113 minutes.) In Hindi and English with subtitles.

Meeting a Milestone / Sangemeel Se Mulaqat

This insightful, beautifully shot documentary from director Goutam Ghose captures the magic of Ustad Bismillah Khan’s music. It explores his instrument, the shehnai (a quadruple-reed woodwind), his passions and his devotion to his hometown of Benaras. We learn how he grew from a 14-year-old boy accompanying his Mamu (uncle) and guru Nabi Baksh Khan at a concert in Allahabad to become one of India’s greatest talents. From his love for Benaras, which is integral to his life and sensibility, to his deep rooted religious convictions, we come to understand the master’s belief that music is the supreme form of living. For all lovers of Indian music, Bismillah Khan and the shehnai are one. (India, 1989, 90 minutes.) In Urdu-Hindi with subtitles.

Conflict / Samar

Shyam Benegal, a director lauded for pioneering a “middle cinema” between commercial Bollywood and art-house fare, made this darkly comedic drama about the persistence of caste and the different ways its inequities are viewed by rural folks and urban sophisticates. Using a film-with-a film structure, Benegal tells the story of a real-life conflict and of a movie crew who have arrived on location to create a fictionalized version of the events. The story is set in a Madhya Pradesh village where tensions over the use of a well by both “untouchables” and others sparks protests. Violence ensues after a local landowner, furious at the poor for their rebellion, tries keeping them from their fields and starving them. In The Times of India, writer R. Sengupta praised “Samar’s multilayered treatment, which allows Benegal to critique, comment, satirize, and sympathize.” The film won India’s National Film Award for Best Film. (India, 1999, 126 minutes.) In Hindi with subtitles.

 Bioscope

K.M. Madhusudhanan’s award-winning film is a charming look at the silent film era in India.  Set in Kerala, it tells of Diwakaran, who in the early years of the 20th century encounters the bioscope (a film projector) being operated by a Frenchman. He purchases the machine and tours local villages with his films, but he is beset by problems—practical, social and familial—as modernity clashes with tradition. Bioscope’s story is based on a real figure, Varunni Joseph, who ran bioscope shows in Kerala in 1907; it takes us to that realm where history, dreams and memories meet. The film was produced by NFDC.  (India, 2008, 94 minutes.) In Malayalam with English subtitles.