Pagdi: The Honour

In Brief: Rajeev Batia's Pagdi: The Honour is an Indian film and the winner of the 22nd annual Twin Rivers Media Festival in Asheville. If you are unfamiliar with the Twin Rivers Festival, that's hardly surprising. It has been almost completely ignored by local media. Yet for a very small film festival, it's managed to keep going far longer than any other, larger film festival. And, as has often been the case in the past, this year's winning film is a notch or two (or more) above the entries of most small festivals. Oh, they've had better films, but Pagdi: The Honour almost makes up for this because of its combination of technical accomplishment (apart from an old-fashioned reliance on fade-outs) and the fact that it gives a look — without any pandering to Western sensibilities — into Indian society we rarely see. The story is fairly simple. It's basically a kind of Romeo and Juliet affair (minus the tragedy) about the "unsuitable" love between two young people from different classes, but the story matters less than the way it's presented. In addition to the feature winners, the festival continues the following day, Sept. 12 with Documentary winners: 1 p.m.-3 p.m; Experimental winners:  3 p.m.-4 p.m.; Short Drama winners:  4 p.m.-6 p.m.; and more Short Drama and Animation winners: 7:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m.