Student Zakir Hossain has become the first filmmaker of Bangladeshi origin to be included on the British Film Catalogue for his debut feature The Auction. The 86 minute long feature has been made to raise awareness of forced marriages.

The film centres around young Runa Begum, a British Bangladeshi girl who goes with her father to Bangladesh on holiday. Her holiday turns into a nightmare when her father sells her to her uncle, who forces her into marriage to his son who is several years younger than Runa.

The young Luton based writer and director hopes to take his film around film-festivals and secure a screening in the near future.
More on the film here.

Surrey based producer Groove Guru, aka Trevor Pinto, is one among other acclaimed musicians to feature on the chillout series New Sound Theory, Vol. 4 – Tiger Lounge. Published by BasicLux Records USA, the album contains a blend of smooth house, bossa nova, downtempo, lush electronica and chillout music.

As a DJ Groove Guru has performed in famous nightspots all over the world. As an A & R manager he has worked with Stereo Nation, Pentagram, Raju Singh, Hema Sardesai, Sonu Nigam, Shankar Mahadevan and among others. He released his first single, Palolem Karma, in February ’06 followed by his 2nd single, Travel Shanti, in March 06 through Spice Global Records.
www.grooveguru.co.uk

Mrs Lopa Patel, founder of the Asian lifestyle portal Redhotcurry.com, has become the first Indian woman to be elected as a Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) – the world’s largest professional body of marketing, with 50,000 members worldwide.

CIM has 1905 fellows with women making up about 10% of this group. Fellowship of the Institute is conferred upon members with a proven track record of expertise in marketing at the most senior level. Lopa, who has been a CIM member since 1990, attained the Institute’s Diploma in Marketing in 1991, became a Chartered Member in 1998 and has worked in marketing throughout her career.

Ms Patel, who is of Gujarati descent, said: “Like most young Asians at the time, I chose to study a science degree to please my parents. Although my first job was with ICI, a company that manufactured chemicals, I sought a role in marketing from the outset.” She then left ICI to start her own venture, a business-to-business direct marketing services company.

The acclaimed group State of Bengal have released their fourth album, Skip-iJ, through Betelnut Records. It is the creation of Sam Zaman, the man behind State of Bengal, who produced and recorded the album over a period of 3 years in his living room in East London.

The album contains collaborations and contributions from traditional and contemporary musicians and singers from across the globe. The band say the unusual title “refers to music that is not defined by a particular period and has the ability to skip through the ages”.

Since forming in 1987, State of Bengal have regularly toured internationally. Sam Zaman has worked with Bjork, Massive Attack, Ananda Shankar, Jolly Mukherjee and Paban Das Baul among others. Their track Flight IC408 was recently featured on the new Mira Nair film Namesake.
The album is available through stateofbengal.com and betelnut-records.com and myspace.com/stateofbengal. The band plan to tour the USA and Turkey this year to promote the album.

Media contact Nina Naran on nina@mediabitch.com.

The self styled Guru of Westgate, wise-man, healer and community leader, Bharat, is coming to BBC Radio 4 this Spring in a new show, The Spiritual Centre.

Be part of the audience for this brand new comedy from the writer of such classic comedies as Goodness, Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42, Suk Pannu and starring Vincent Ebrahim (The Kumars at No. 42) as Bharat and Tim Key (Cowards) as his disciple Henry. This is an inspiring character driven comedy emphasising the richness and texture of our Asian community through its interaction with Bharat and his followers.

Recording on 2nd & 5th May 2007 at The Drill Hall
To request free tickets to this recording go online at www.bbc.co.uk/tickets.

For nearly two million Muslims living in Britain the legacy of the 9/11 and July 7 terrorist attacks has been one of continuing public suspicion and distrust. The intense media spotlight has led many to question whether their future here is secure, even those who have professional middle class jobs and previously felt well-integrated.

In I’m a Muslim, Get me out of here! reporter Navid Akhtar meets such families who are contemplating leaving the UK and visits others who have already left for greener Islamic pastures abroad.
BBC Radio 4 at 5pm Sunday 29th April.
You can also listen online for a week after broadcast.

London’s Evening Standard newspaper has promoted Rob Singh to crime reporter, it announced today. Singh was previously a new reporter on the Standard and its sister newspaper London Lite. He replaces Rich Edwards, who left to join the Telegraph.

Out of the recently released, which film – Jag Mundhra’s Provoked or Mira Nair’s Namesake – has done better? Well it depends where you look.

Provoked’s distributor Eros International recently sent out a press release touting that it had crossed Namesake’s weekend box office takings in the UK, £140,204 with 35 prints as opposed to Namesake’s slightly lower £125,084 box-office takings, which was available to watch in 59 screens by contrast.

But Provoked, which stars Aishwarya Rai, is amusingly enough doing worse in India. The Namesake has earned nearly three times as much as Provoked, at around Rs 4 crore there. Similarly, in the United States Namesake has earned nearly $9 million so far, more than recouping its investment.
You can read a review of Provoked at AssetsWorld:

The script is appallingly banal and cliched. The ‘characters’ are one dimensional. Everyone overacts and the message is brought down on the viewer like a ton of bricks in a bulldozer at every turn. The beautiful Aishwarya emotes like mad but she is horribly miscast in the role of a victim and a prisoner.

What did you think of either films?

Tamasha theatre is bringing back some of its popular theatre productions: The Trouble with Asian Men, and A Fine Balance from next month.

The theatre company’s adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s novel will start touring at The Nuffield in Southampton (1 – 5 May) and The Rep in Birmingham (15 – 19 May). See: a-fine-balance.com

The Trouble With Asian Men will return to London next month, before touring to Bradford, Manchester and Glasgow. Created entirely from interviews with the public, the latest run will feature a new all-male cast performing dozens of real-life characters. It starts its tour at the artsdepot in London from 22nd May. It will then move to The Alhambra Studio in Bradford; Contact in Manchester; and The Citizens Theatre in Glasgow during June.

The Guardian reports today:

The author Hanif Kureishi accused the BBC of censorship last night, after it dropped a radio broadcast of his short story describing the work of a cameraman who films the executions of western captives in Iraq. Radio 4 cancelled a reading of Weddings and Beheadings, one of five nominations for the National Short Story prize due to be broadcast this week, after concluding the timing “would not be right” following unconfirmed reports that kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston had been killed by a jihadist group.

Kureishi, whose work includes The Buddha of Surburbia, Intimacy and the screenplay for the film My Beautiful Launderette, said he was angry at the decision, which he described as a result of “stupid thinking” on the part of BBC executives.

“It seems to me that as a journalist, he would be against censorship,” he said of Johnston, who has been missing for more than a month and for whom fears intensified on Sunday when a previously unknown group, the Palestinian Brigades of Monotheism and Holy War, claimed to have killed him.

Composer, producer and tabla player Kuljit Bhamra has collaborated with composer and musician Alwynne Pritchard for an album, titled Subterfuge Invitro, to be released on May 21st. Alwynne is also BBC Radio 3’s ‘Hear & Now’ presenter and teacher of composition at Trinity College of Music London.

Alwynne’s music has been performed by numerous European players and ensembles including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Arditti String Quartet and The London Sinfonietta.

Kuljit Bhamra, known for producing soundtracks for films including Bhaji on the Beach and ‘Bend It Like Beckham, and theatre productions such as The Far Pavilions and Deranged Marriage, recently released his album Himalaya Dawn.

More recently Bhamra and Andy Sheppard performed their music for the Queen and Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey as part of Observance for Commonwealth Day 2007.
www.kuljitbhamra.com / www.alwynnepritchard.co.uk
Media contact: Pat Tynan 01895 636935 / pattynan@btinternet.com

Soul singer Karen David’s debut EP, Alive, has been released through download outlets such as iTunes and Napster. The actress and singer is better known for her parts in Batman Begins, Bollywood Queen and more recently Provoked. She also had part in the West-end hit Mamma Mia and was the lead in Tamasha Theatre’s Strictly Dandiya on its second tour.

She has been focusing more on her music of late. The EP features her often performed song ‘Carry Me Home’ and features AR Rahman, Bombay Dub Orchestra and others. The EP also includes the song ‘Alive’, featured on Provoked.

Karen is working to finish her debut album for an Autumn release this year.
myspace.com/karendavid

In his book, Unimagined, Imran Ahmad charts his course through school, university and into his first job, exploring with poignant humour and painful insight the dilemmas of a Muslim boy growing up in Britain. How different is a Muslim boy from a ‘normal’ boy? Are Muslims allowed to pursue happiness, or is that only for the Afterlife? What do Muslims really believe? What is truly Islamic and what is merely cultural?

Imran stumbles though life encountering colourful characters, philosophical dilemmas and theological threats. Is there a correlation between studying and passing exams, or is it entirely the will of God? Will he really burn in Hell for all eternity if he doesn’t accept that Islam was created by Satan to keep people away from the salvation of Christianity – as the Christian Union keep telling him as they doggedly pursue him to convert. Is it okay to be British and Muslim, or are the two irreconcilable? Wouldn’t life be perfect if he just had a Jaguar XJS?

City Circle is hosting a thoughtful yet humorous evening with bestselling author, Imran Ahmad, on “Unimagined: A Muslim boy Meets the West” on Friday 20 April at 6.45pm at 45 Crawford Place, London, W1H 4LP.
Entrance is free, please see website

Writing for the Media Guardian last week, journalist Sara Wajid uncovers goings-on in East London, illustrating not only a fight for ethnic minority readers but also a glimpse into their media habits:

A council-owned local paper aimed at ethnic-minority readers in east London has been accused of wasting taxpayers’ money and jeopardising independent local journalism. Award-winning East End Life (EEL), published by Tower Hamlets Council , costs £1.3m a year to produce and has a circulation of 90,000.

It looks like a conventional local paper with unusually high production values, attracts more Bangladeshi readers than the Bangladeshi papers produced in the area, and promotes positive representations of black and Asian youth.
…
He ascribes the paper’s popularity among ethnic-minority readers to the rounded and positive representations in the paper, the Somali and Bangladeshi language pages, and the fact that young Bangladeshis are not necessarily attracted to Sylheti language papers.

Read the full article to find out more.

Pakistan-born British journalist Sarfraz Manzoor’s debut book, Greetings from Bury Park, about growing up in a working-class Luton neighborhood, has been sold to the United States for publication. It is already being published in Britain in June by Vintage.

In the book Sarfraz describes how the discovery of Bruce Springsteen’s music and a determination to live a non-traditional Muslim life galvanized him to seek out possibilities other than those acceptable to his family and by his culture. It will be published in the US by Vintage and in the UK by Bloomsbury.

He told AIM magazine: “I was really pleased and surprised to see my book – which is quite British in its tone and content – being picked up by Vintage but they really loved it and think it could do really well in the States which is both great for me but also in terms of projecting a very different image of British Muslims to the US.”

sarfrazmanzoor.co.uk

Last week the famous Madame Tussauds unveiled its latest Bollywood wax figure – Shah Rukh Khan. Unsurprising really, considering his popularity. Surely he should have been added ages ago?

These are some of the pictures taken for AIM magazine by journalist Jaspreet Pandohar. She will be writing later this week for us on the growing economic power of Bollywood in the UK. Will it be another Indian Summer in the UK? Look out for that and more pictures.

Racial hatred between rival gang members spills over to four young kids on a treasure hunt for an ancient mystical sword stolen thousands of years ago from India.

That is the basic storyline for ‘A Really Big Adventure’, a unique stage and film hybrid play that looks at issues of prejudice within communities. Along with tackling hate crime, the characters also have to contend with not falling foul of the booby traps and dangerous puzzles along their way to retrieving an ancient artifact of great power.

Produced by The Filim Company and Tower Hamlets Crime Reduction Service, this production will play at the Brady Arts Centre in East London on April 25th – 29th. More information: filim.co.uk

More than 50 top BBC executives, nine Channel 4 programme commissioners and some of the biggest independent production companies will be available for one-to-one meetings with black and minority ethnic film and television professionals at Move on Up, taking place at the TUC in central London on 18th June.

But the deadline to attend this event is nearly over! Whether you are a writer, crew member, producer, director or runner, whether you are relatively new in the industry or a seasoned professional, as this is all about making contacts it is an unmissable event for you.

For more on this event see this story. Bectu has extended the deadline to 13th April.

Tiata Delights, a week-long festival of new work from emerging and established African writers, launches later this month at the Soho Theatre in London. Six plays will be showcased as rehearsed readings with live musical accompaniment from James Lascelles/Juwon Ogungbe.

The writers include Nayesh Radia, by Lizzy Dijeh, Lucian G W Msamati, Levi David Addai and Beminabu Kebede. It will take place from 23rd – 28th April 2007. More on sohotheatre.com

The talented pianist Zoe Rahman has unveiled a series of performance dates around the country. Firmly establishing herself as one of the brightest stars on contemporary jazz scene, her most recent album, ‘Melting Pot’, was short-listed for the Mercury Prize and was voted ‘Jazz Album of the Year’ at the 2006 Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

Born in Chichester, UK, Zoe studied music at Oxford University. She has since built up an interesting CV, playing punky worldbeat with Terry Hall and Mushtaq (Fun Da Mental), trancey Arabic folk with singer Reem Kelani, and superior hard bop with drummer Clark Tracey, as well as writing for the theatre.

13th and 14th April; Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean Street, London.
Saturday 28th April; The Drum, Birmingham

More dates on her website

Yorkshire county is planning an IIFA Fringe Festival this year alongside the main Bollywood awards weekend. It will include a ‘Bollywood Bazaar’ in Bradford, a mela in Leeds, a ‘Bollywood in the basin’ dance and arts event in Sheffield and another mini-mela in York. More on the Yorkshire Tourist Board website.

Last week Amitabh Bachchan (pictured) visited Leeds Civic Hall to raise curtains on the IIFA awards 2007.
More pictures at DesiMalai