Indian takeaway

To some, Yash Pal Suri's home movies of living in Darlington are just the story of an Indian doctor who made a new life for his wife and children in the North-East of England.

The retired consultant physician views his film-maker daughter Sandhya's documentary, that uses his amateur Super 8 films and audio letters, as something much bigger.

"Some people say it's about her family but no, it's about every migrant. It's the story of migration - the heartbreak and the separation, the country you leave and the struggle of those left back home," he says.

"They are home movies but it's about everyman. This is why people are able to relate to it. When I saw it, the audience said they could relate to it. It's basically sharing and, to me, sharing is everything. The whole meaning of my life is sharing with others."

James Hails, of Northern Film & Media which part funded I For India, calls the film a very rare and important piece. "It not only tells the history of an Asian family living in 1960s Darlington, but speaks to national and international audiences as an intimate and revealing portrait of family life."

I For India will receive its first North-East screening as part of SAMA 07, the South-Asian Music and Arts festival being held in the North-East this month. Afterwards director Sandhya Suri will lead a Q&A session.

The story began in 1965 when Indian doctor Yash Pal Suri finished medical school and left for England to practise medicine. One of the first things he did on arrival was to buy two Super 8 cameras, two projectors and two reel-to-reel recorders. One set of equipment he kept for himself, the other he sent to his family in India.

For 40 years, rather than exchange letters, he and the relatives he'd left behind exchanged home movies and recordings. The result is a unique record of the life of an immigrant family in this country as he sent images of snow, mini-skirted women and a trip to an English supermarket back to his remaining family in Meerut in India.

"I obviously didn't know it would end up on the big screen," says Yash Pal Suri, who still lives in Darlington.

"Basically, I had a great interest in cinema. I remember as a young boy going to the old bazaar and buying this old cine projector. Home movies were a good way of documenting your life and family.

"Books aren't the same as moving pictures. I used audio too because there's only so much you can record with celluloid. People had more time then, it was a different pace of life. We could watch the films once a week. We'd say 'let's look at the old films of Blackpool Tower or whatever'. Then we got busier and it became a yearly event of seeing the films."

Sandhya says her father was frustrated by the methods he had to communicate with his family back in India. "Communications to where we came from were very bad. He had always been a cine enthusiast. The family in India made their films, sent it back to him and he sent it to Switzerland for processing."

Sandhya was, of course, familiar with the Super 8 movies. Then, in the late 1990s, she found a box of audio tapes, and began hatching the idea of using them and the home movies in a feature-length documentary.

"I was aware of the film but not all the audio. Sound was sometimes on the film but the more private stuff was on separate audio reels," she says. She had to cut and shape a huge amount of personal archive into a 70-minute film, giving it not only an emotional coherence but representing the lives of her family over four decades.

It was a massive task. As well as the Super 8 movies, she had over 40 hours of audio letters of her father documenting his life.

She says that listening to his audio letters "to the mike clicking on and off, us as children playing in the background, his breath as he struggles to find the right words, or the barely concealed anger or puzzlement in his voice, you can really picture him sitting in front of his tape recorder, documenting his life."

Her father was part of the Indian "brain drain" who responded to a big recruitment drive for South Asians doctors to work over here. "It was not so easy to specialise in India. The move wasn't so much economic as the idea of getting a good training, working a few years and returning home," she says.

"It was always his intention to go back. It's the classic immigrants' story now. He got a house and children and never went back. The climax of the film is that after his mother died and a lot of emotional pressure, he did return with all of us for a visit in 1982."

His archive of home movies is unique. Sandhya, who studied documentary at the National Film and Television School, went to India to retrieve the material sent over there. "I found things in a terrible state, stuck in attics. I cleaned up everything, it was quite laborious," she says.

The British Film Institute has asked to retain the originals in its library because they don't have any similar accounts covering immigrants settling in this country over such a long period.

"I'd be interested to find out more about how much Asians in the North-East did document their early lives here. I don't think there's much. Super 8 was mainly a white, middle-class hobby," she says.

Finance from Northern Film & Media was welcome but she was disappointed not to get more UK money for I For India. The budget came from a variety of countries including France, Germany, Spain and South Africa.

I For India has taken two years to get a release in this country after screenings at international festivals. Sandhya's father is more than pleased with the result, happy that people have found it both enjoyable and educational. "I'm glad that she did it. There's no better way of sharing it," he says.

"She had shown us it on DVD. I didn't see it on a big screen until the premiere. It was very moving for me."

*I For India is being shown at the Tyneside Cinema at Old Town Hall, Gateshead, on Wednesday at 8.20pm, followed by a Q&A as Sanddhya Suri. The screening is part of SAMA 07 (South-Asian Music and Arts) taking place in the North-East. Box office 0191-2328289.