A Small World of Film

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IT'S HARD ENOUGH for an organization that seeks to bring diversity into classrooms to get its regular job done; to mount and run a film festival is sheer folly.

The Spinning Wheel Film Festival is an ambitious enterprise for the Kaur Foundation, and it is being presented not as a niche program for only the Sikh community, but as an event for lovers of independent filmmaking.

"Our issues are global, of course," said Mirin Kaur, co-founder of the Sikh American women's group, "be it human rights, be it dignity, be it health issues. But [the festival] is more introspective. These are not professional filmmakers; they are from every walk of life and have many perspectives, whether they show it in seven minutes or 50 minutes."

Among the films to be screened during the one-day festival — divided into three clusters — are Sharat Raju's "American Made," about a family's very bumpy road trip to the Grand Canyon. (It was shown on PBS' "Independent Lens" and at various film festivals.) There will also be a startling FBI recruiting advertisement, reverent historical films, documentaries and a look at one teacher's attempt to instruct her students in tolerance.

While the Kennedy Center Web site lists the first two blocks of films as sold out, Kaur notes that they are not. Some free passes for the full day of films will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. And it sounds as if there are plenty of takers.

"On the night of the gala, because we are about classrooms, we are to have the county board members, schoolteachers and principals both from private and public schools —and this is spring break, can you imagine? But people are coming."

"If it could help open a door, what more could one want?"

» Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW; Sat., film groupings begin at 10:30 a.m.,
2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., $30; 202-467-4600. (Foggy Bottom-GWU)

Photo courtesy Kaur Foundation