What is a film but a collective dream, a consensual journey into a world wrought in light and sound and magic? The art medium that defined the twentieth-century and shows no sign of slowing down in the twenty-first, films have almost limitless potential, and while some of the vocabulary of the motion camera might be universal, some of it is intrinsically local to a specific culture. Could an American ever truly appreciate the way Sholay is embedded into the Indian cultural consciousness?

So this Antaragni we celebrate the kaleidoscopic facets of Indian cinema. From the turbulent darkness of Guru Dutt to the sentimental magic realism of Yash Raj Films, from the deceptive simplicity of Satyajit Ray to the obsessive madness of Ritwik Ghatak, from the super-stylized polish of Tamil action films to the under-stated humanism of Marathi alternate cinema, the richness and diversity of Indian cinema is as wonderful as it is overwhelming. So come join us in our carnival of dreams, a technicolour celebration of life at 24 frames per second. It all started with lanterns whose coloured glass transformed the fire inside into multicoloured wonders, and today we take up the legacy, as the colours of the human spirit create towering achievments, transforming Antaragni, "the Fire Within."