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Jacub Fernandes, the south Asian community development worker at the Parkdale Community Health Centre, has organized an eight week long Bollywood Film festival that begins on Feb. 6. (Jan. 30, 2012)
Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD
It's a movie program with a purpose: Bollywood Nights is an eight week movie festival being run out of the Parkdale Community Health Centre.
Jacub Fernandes, the south Asian community development worker at the Parkdale Community Health Centre, organized the film festival that begins on Feb. 6. He explained the aim of the Bollywood Nights is two fold. The first is to give the South Asian community an opportunity to congregate while at the same time introducing them to the Parkdale Community Health Centre and its services.
Fernandes, a resident of the Toronto neighbourhood of Little Italy, started working at the Parkdale Community Health Centre at the beginning of January. Bollywood Nights is the first program he has organized for the centre and he explained this festival is geared specifically at the South Asian community.
"In terms of generic community building groups, that is not something that is happening for the South Asian community here (at the Parkdale Community Health Centre)," he said. "This was my first step in bringing people in and then talking to them about different things that are offered at Parkdale Community Health Centre.
"It just seemed like a lot of people who are South Asian in Parkdale wanted a social gathering where they could just meet and hang out, that wasn't geared at education and there was no pressure."
Sometimes language can be a barrier for people accessing public spaces in Parkdale, he said, so the movies will be in Tibetan, Hindi and Tamil languages with English subtitles.
"We have a pretty big community of people who are Tamil and Tibetan in Parkdale so doing a combination of Hindi and Tamil movies seemed like a pretty good idea," Fernandes said.
Each Monday evening for eight weeks the Parkdale Community Health Centre will showcase a Hindi or Tamil film, from the classics to the latest blockbusters with dinner being provided.
"The point of having classics and blockbuster Hindi and Tamil films means that pretty much anyone interested in watching a movie can come out," Fernandes said.
Bollywood Nights begins on Feb. 6 at 6 p.m. and runs each Monday night through March in the Almerinda Rebelo Room of the Parkdale Community Health Centre, 1229 Queen St. W. This is a free event and Fernandes said they can accommodate 40 to 50 people.