In celebration of International Education Week, Honors College Assembly will be hosting a Bollywood movie night on Monday, Nov. 11, where students can see “Three Idiots,” the highest grossing Bollywood movie of all time. The film follows the story of three engingeering students and their takes on education.
Chloe Smith, a senior and director of cultural experiences in HCA, said her main motivation for picking an Indian movie night was to help facilitate what students wanted and what she felt the Capstone needed for International Education Week.
“The goal of our branch in the Honors College is to bring the world to UA,” Smith said. “So one of the ways we do that is by asking international students to show their own culture, and if they’re not there, it’s like our job to do what we can do. None of us are experts on Indian culture, but we’re doing what we can.”
Genevieve Miller, sohpomore majoring in biology said she thinks many don’t know much about Inida’s culture. She said she wanted to promote a Bollywood night on campus because of several of her own experiences with Indian culture in and around Alabama. She said she believes a movie night could be a great way to pique students’ interest in Indian culture.
“I think Bollywood in particular is a good introduction to their culture, since Bollywood is, in a literal sense, India’s Hollywood and has a huge impact on their culture,” Miller said. “The movies are also just fun to watch, especially the intricate dance numbers.”
In Indian culture, this past week, Nov. 3 to Nov. 7, was the Diwali Festival, or Festival of Lights, a Hindu celebration where participants often light clay lamps and shoot off firecrackers.
Junior Shashank Wattal moved from New Delhi, India, to study electrical and computer engineering at the University, and celebrated Diwali with friends, though he said it differed from celebrating back home. Wattal said he knew of only one official celebration of Diwali, which was on Nov. 10 when the South Asian Society hosted the festival in the Riverside Community Center.
“I kind of celebrated it, but not like we usually do back home because back home it involves a lot of firecrackers and lots of candles, which you can’t really do here,” Wattal said.
Wattal said students should attend the Bollywood movie night if they’re looking to get insight into another culture.
“If you watch a Bollywood movie, you’re seeing the kind of entertainment that’s produced within India, within that society, and I feel like that a really good way to learn about a culture is to see what sort of entertainment they have and what kind of things they do when they have free time. And movies are a big part of the cultural entertainment in India,” Wattal said.
The screening will be Monday, Nov. 11 at 8 p.m. in 120 Lloyd Hall.
