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HAIR INDIA Documentary 75’ (52’ version also available) by Raffaele Brunetti and Marco Leopardi Produced by B&B Film in co-production with: NDR (Germany), ARTE (France – Germany) in association with: YLE (Finland), RAI (Italy), OHM (The Netherlands), ETB (Spain), AL JAZEERA ENGLISH in collaboration with Terra and filmtank GmbH produced with the support of MEDIA Locations: Italy – India Format: 16:9 HDCAM Delivery: October 2008 Premio Ondas 2009 – Best International Programme (Spain, 2009) Guangzhou Documentary Film Festival 2009 - Jury Prize (China 2009) IDFA (The Netherlands, 2008), Festival dei Popoli (Italy, 2008), Bakaforum (Switzerland, 2009), DOC NZ (New Zealand, 2009), Zagreb Dox (Croatia, 2009), Belfast Film Festival (Ireland, 2009), Beldocs (Serbia, 2009), Festival de Guadalajara (Mexico, 2009), Full Frame (USA, 2009), HOT DOCS (Canada, 2009), Docville (Belgium 2009), Stranger Than Fiction (Ireland 2009) OXDOX (England, 2009), DOXA Documentary Film Festival (Canada, 2009), Seoul Human Rights Film Festival (South Korea, 2009), MARFICI (Argentina, 2009), David di Donatello Awards (Italy, 2009), Globo d’Oro (Italy, 2009), Brisbane International Film Festival (Australia, 2009), Lemesos Doc Fest (Cyprus, 2009), Documentarist (Turkey 2009), Festival d’Abruzzo (Italy, 2009), Bellaria Film Festival (Italy, 2009), BANFF TV Festival (Canada, 2009), Shanghai TV Festival (China, 2009), Napoli Film Festival (Italy, 2009), Prix Italia (Italy, 2009), Mediterranean Film Festival (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2009), Docudays (Lebanon, 2009), Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival (Brazil, 2009), Pamplona Film Festival (Spain), Films From the South (Norway), Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival (USA), OUFF (Spain, 2009), Doc Fest Stratford (Canada, 2009), Sao Paulo International Film Festival (Brazil, 2009), Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival (USA, 2009), Flahertiana (Russia, 2009), Document 7 (Scotland, 2009), Global Visions (Canada, 2009), Kassel Doc&Video Fest. (Germany, 2009), Guangzhou Int’l Documentary Film Festival (China, 2009), Bar International TV Festival (Montenegro, 2009), Sichuan TV Festival (China, 2009), Reframe Peterborough International Film Festival (Canada, 2010), One World Romania (Romania, 2010), Underhill (Montenegro, 2010), EST Film Festival (Italy. 2010), Umbria Film Festival (Italy, 2010).

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The journey of a young Indian woman’s hair, donated to the Temple to be then converted into exquisite hair extensions in Italy. This same hair will then return to India to satisfy the whim of a successful career woman in Bombay. A story of the cult of beauty in the era of globalisation. An original view of today’s India with its contradictions. A kaleidoscope of modernity, economic expansion and ancient traditions.

…while planning his wedding to the goddess Padmavathi, Vishnu accumulated a large debt with Kubera, the gods’ treasurer, who, in consideration of the high interest rate he had stipulated, decided that the loan could be paid off by the hundreds of generations over the centuries to come. For hundreds of years, devotees have donated money or jewellery. Many will not hesitate to offer the only thing they own: every day 40,000 pilgrims donate their hair in a ritual of purification. Until a few years ago the hair donated to the temples was burned or used to stuff mattresses. Today this hair has become an extraordinary economic resource. Thousands of locks find their way to Italy, purchased by Mr. Gold, owner of “Great Lengths”, the world’s leading manufacturer of the extensions used to thicken and lengthen hair. “Great Lengths” hair extensions are considered the best on the world market. The company exports not only to the USA and Europe, but also to the Arab countries, Australia, Russia, and many others including… India. THE STORY AND THE CHARACTERS Music, voices and other noises in a bustling Indian temple mix together and progressively fade away as the camera approaches the face of a young Indian woman. She seems to ignore what is happening around her; she is watching a girl of about ten whose hair is being shaved off. The “priest-barber” skilfully uses the sharp razor. The girl is calm and motionless. Hemlata, is a young Indian woman from a small village in Bengal. She lives in a farming village without telephones or electricity by the side of a major road. Together with her family, she is going on a 5-day pilgrimage to donate her hair to the temple of Simachalam in the Andra Pradesh region. It is the first time she is leaving the village. It is a journey in time as well as in space, and also an inner journey. Hemlata’s route to purification crosses an India unchanged for centuries, but also a modern India, that of girls in blue jeans who crowd out fast-food places, and where career women with hairstyles straight out of the magazines drive brand-new cars.

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Hemlata’s story runs parallel with those of three other characters: Sangeeta, an ambitious Bombay journalist, Thomas Gold, owner of ‘Great Lengths’, and Mayoor Balsara, the Bangalore wholesaler who buys hair from the temple to re-sell it to ‘Great Lengths’. Sangeeta is thirty-five, single and a Bombayite. She is the executive editor of the fashion and lifestyle magazine Hello!. She is an assiduous denizen of Bombay’s high life and a careful observer of the society in which she moves. She is a part of the Bombay elite to which her magazine is dedicated. Sangeeta attends clubs, art exhibitions and surfs Indian web sites, specializing in weddings. She is a regular customer at Dilshad’s, one of the most exclusive hair salons in Bombay. Now she is at a crucial point in her career path and upward social mobility. The most important fashion show in India is about to take place. This is a vital time for Sangeeta. She absolutely has to do something about her hair… Dilshad has become famous as hairdresser to the stars. Her salon in Bombay is the best place to gain an insight into the India of the ruling classes, as the owner listens to the confidences of actors, industrialists and the new class of upwardly mobile career men and women whose ranks are being boosted by India’s strong economic growth. Since she started using Great Length’s hair extensions her business has boomed. Dilshad has established herself firmly among Bombay’s upper classes, and is regarded as a sort of high priestess to the god of beauty and success. Thomas Gold is a young millionaire, casually dressed and courteous in manner. With his father David, Thomas set up the business empire known as “Great Lengths”. Beauty and the desire to attain it shape the belief system which globalisation has imposed on most of the world, and which they decided to exploit. They have a direct, simple relationship with the hair: it is a route to wealth. Thomas’s conscience is “clear”: he has been assured that the money the temples receive in exchange for the hair will be reinvested in good works, and he wants to believe it. Now he is flying his helicopter over his factory on the outskirts of Rome. He is on the telephone, talking to Mayoor, his childhood friend and wholesale hair dealer in Bangalore. They went to the same schools in England and speak to each other in English. A large consignment of hair is on its way from India to be processed and turned into hair extensions at ‘Great Lengths’. Mayoor Balsara is a rich, jovial Indian. Unlike his friends who have made their careers in Bangalore’s computer business, he has made his fortune through buying and selling hair. He provides employment for fifty young Indian women, whose work consists of combing, washing and selecting the hair before it is exported. The only sound to be heard in the vast halls of his Bangalore factory is the clinking of the multicoloured glass bangles worn by his workers. Mayoor has almost no need for more than one customer: his friend Thomas, with whom he is perpetually on the telephone. But this customer is highly demanding, so Mayoor has to spend a great deal of his time going round the region’s temples. He goes to the auctions which the temples hold in order to sell their “production” of hair. He knows the

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tricks of the trade and how to close deals with the Brahmins. Once a year he goes to the temple of Simachalam where thousands of kilograms of hair are auctioned. Structured on an alternate editing, four stories develop in parallel: Hemlata’s family pilgrimage, Sangeeta and her frenetic activity in glamorous Bombay, Mayoor in his factory in Bangalore and Thomas in Rome. By the end of the film the circle is closed: after the long journey Hemlata reaches the temple and has her head shaved along with the rest of the family; her route to purification at the temple is marked by the symbols of modernity, that she has encountered along the way, and which have influenced her prayers and desires. Dilshad applies to Sangeeta the locks of hair that have left India for Italy, and which have returned to India in the form of Great Lengths hair extensions. Sangeeta, with her new hairdo, turns up to the most important fashion show of the year. All of Bombay’s high society is gathered here, rubbing shoulders with photographers, models, artists and actors. From the press seats, she watches the stunning Indian models with their beautiful long hair, parading along the catwalk. DIRECTORS’ NOTE OF INTENT The journey of the hair is a strange thread that allows us to penetrate the contradictions of modern India, a world power where the development of high technology and the steady growth of industry are producing wealth, well-being and tensions between the old and the new. A country where modern development, ancient traditions and profound spirituality live side-by-side. Today’s India is undergoing great changes. It epitomises all the contradictions of a country that is truly on the path to development. The world’s greatest democracy is also a country in which the high rate of economic growth is leaving behind the overwhelming majority of the population. One in which opportunities and rights are still dictated by caste and in which, in rural areas, women’s rights are in constant abeyance. Most Indians live on less than a dollar a day, but an apartment costs more to rent in Bombay than it does in New York. In Bombay alone, new wine bars, spaghetti houses, sumptuous art galleries and elegant show rooms open every day. India is the country of the computer industry boom, the only place in the world to experience a reverse brain drain, where the brightest people find more opportunities to work than they would in Europe or America. This is also the country of call centres and where a new, young workforce, mostly female, is creating a huge market onto which cosmetics multinationals have battened. The age-old cult of beauty is meeting the global beauty market: not only does it import Western models, but it also absorbs them and exports home-grown, Indian cultural models.

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The thirty-thousand-kilometre journey of a lock of hair is a way of telling the story of today’s India and her relationship with the West. The characters in the film are symbols of the subcontinent’s rapid change and its simultaneous attachment to ancient traditions. The lock of hair assumes different values as it goes along: whether spiritual or material, depending on the person and the context. Each of the characters in this documentary film attributes a symbolic value to hair: each regards it as a means towards an essential end, the way to his own credo. There are those who believe in beauty, others in success, in riches or in purity. But as in the contradictions of modern India, so in the souls of the personalities themselves: roles are not always easily definable and these very roles mirror the changes affecting an entire continent.

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RAFFAELE BRUNETTI Raffaele Brunett i has been a documentary-film director and producer since 1987. He founded B&B Film, a dynamic production house based in Rome. The company develops and produces creative documentary films through co-production and broadcast agreements, ranging from social issues, to History, to environment, working with quality European partners such as ZDF, Arte, NDR, YLE, SVT, RAI as well as international networks such as National Geographic. Raffaele Brunetti’s documentaries have been broadcast in more than 160 countries and have been awarded at several international film festivals. He received - among others - the “Award for Creative Excellence” at the U.S. International Film Festival, the “Globo d’Oro” with his film Mitumba, produced with NDR Arte and YLE. His latest film, Hair India, was selected for the official competition of IDFA (The Netherlands, 2008), Festival dei Popoli (Italy, 2008), Full Frame Film Festival (USA, 2009), Hot Docs (Canada, 2009), Prix Italia (Italy, 2009), as well as for other major film festivals and won the Ondas Award as best International Programme (Spain, 2009) and the Jury Award at GZDoc (China, 2009). He has recently produced the documentary film Housing by Federica Di Giacomo, selected for the Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland, 2009), CPH:DOX (Denmark, 2009) and Torino Film Festival (Italy, 2009). He has been a member of the board of directors of Doc/it (Organization of Italian Documentary Makers) since 2005 and of EDN (European Documentary Network) since 2009. He is director of the “Italian Doc Screenings”, Italian documentary showcase and a member of the Foreign Press Association in Italy. MARCO LEOPARDI He was born in Rome in 1961. In 1990, after considerable experience in photographic reportages Marco Leopardi began directing and photographing documentaries focussing on nature, geography and socio-anthropology. In the past ten years he has made over thirty documentaries, which have been broadcast by the RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana as well as foreign networks. In 2006 he directed Oltre la sbarra for the RAI, a documentary on the areas near Chernobyl exposed to the radiation, and he directed and photographed A Perfect World, a 90-minute film-documentary for the “No Border” slot on National Geographic Channels International awarded at the “Big Screen Festival” in Yuman (China) as Best documentary in 2007. His latest film, ‘Hair India’, was in competition for the "IDFA Joris Ivens Award for Feature-Length Documentaries”, for the international competition in the ‘Festival dei Popoli’ of Florence and at Full Frame Film Festival 2009. B&B Film B&B Film is a dynamic Italian production house based in Rome. The company develops and produces documentaries and documentary series through co-production and broadcast agreements, ranging from social issues, to history, to creative themes, working with quality European partners such as ZDF, Arte and YLE. B&B Film’s documentaries have been shown in more than 160 countries and have been awarded at major international film festivals. In 2006 and in 2008 B&B Film received Slate Funding from the Media Plus Programme.