A Naperville nonprofit is hoping to spark community conversations about cultural diversity this weekend with a new film screening event.
Naperville Neighbors United (NNU), the organization behind Naperville’s now annual Juneteenth Celebration, is hosting the inaugural “Keeping it Reel” film festival. The full-day event to be held from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Naperville’s Matrix Club on Route 59 will feature two films, a documentary short and a discussion with filmmakers.
Attendees can expect a day of “meaningful film viewing, community and conversation,” organizers said in a news release.
The first film to be shown is “Sahela.” Directed by Raghuvir Joshi, it follows a pair of newlyweds as their relationship is tested by questions of sexuality and identity. A panel discussion with the nonprofit Desi Rainbow Parents & Allies will follow.
Desi Rainbow serves South Asian families and friends of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning people to help them learn about LGBTQIA+ issues as well as how to better support their loved ones, according to the nonprofit’s website.
The second screening will showcase “Inked in Faith,” a short film focused on a group called Ramnamis from the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, who have historically been positioned at the bottom of India’s caste system. The film is particularly focused on the Ramnamis’ distinctive form of worship: tattoos.
More than a century ago, Ramnamis began tattooing the name of the Hindu god Ram on their bodies and faces. It was an act borne out of deviance and devotion, done to send a message to higher castes that god was everywhere, regardless of caste or social standing, Reuters wrote of the Ramnamis in 2016.
The director will provide opening remarks ahead of the short film.
Both “Inked in Faith” and “Sahela” are coming to Naperville in conjunction with the Chicago South Asian Film Festival, which is running Friday through Sunday at Chicago’s AMC River East 21 movie theater. NNU partnered with the festival, which is in its 15th year, to screen the films in Naperville.
To round out Keeping it Reel, the final film will be “Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting.” The feature-length documentary from co-directors Aviva Kempner and Ben West chronicles the exploitation of Native American culture in the world of sports, marketing and popular culture. The audience will have a chance to speak with West after the screening.
The festival’s intent is to explore issues and provoke conversation about different cultures, NNU Executive Director Saily Joshi said. It was devised under the nonprofit’s overarching mission of building an inclusive community, Joshi said.
NNU was founded in 2018 by Naperville City Councilman Benny White. Since its inception, the group has made a point of facilitating community conversations across a wide stretch of topics, from educating the public about resources during the pandemic to Naperville’s founding history.
To that end, Sunday’s screenings are another means of engaging in that kind of community learning, Joshi said.
“One thing we talk about at NNU is having a growth mindset,” she said. “And I think this is a great way to come and explain a topic or a different culture. That can be passively, in some sense, by just listening and learning from (films) because not everyone is comfortable being in a conversation where they have to be a participant.
“Film allows you to just sit for a few hours and explore, really, the world and so many different topics.”
In addition to this weekend’s screenings, NNU is coordinating school visits with West to discuss “Imagining the Indian” in classrooms across Naperville School District 203, Indian Prairie School District 204, Lyons Township High School District 204 and North Central College in Naperville, according to NNU board member Donna Sack, who is co-chairing Keeping it Reel with Joshi.
With the involvement of local school districts, the event has “blossomed into a conversation that is going to be wider than the film series day itself,” Sack said.
“(That) just shows the amount of interest out there for people wanting to better understand the implications of how much we know about each other and what we don’t know about each other,” she said. “And how we might broaden and improve how we have conversations and how we operate in our day to day lives.”
Tickets for Keeping it Reel at $35 and are available at keepingitreel2024.eventbrite.com.