Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
CWC Global: Polite Society
- Tuesday, March 5, 2024 / 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM (PST)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: Sony 4K digital projection (103 minutes)
- With Kashif Shaikh (co-founder and president, Pillars Fund)
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Director: Nida Manzoor
Starring: Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya, Renu Brindle
Combining wry British humor with with vibrant Bollywood choreography and explosive martial arts action, Polite Society (2023) is Nida Manzoor’s feature film directorial debut. The film follows the sprightly British-Pakistani teenager Ria Khan. An aspiring stunt performer, Ria lives at home in London with her parents and art-school-dropout sister Lena, who is set to be married to the affluent and attractive geneticist Salim. Suspicious of Salim’s intentions, Ria sets out on a quest to sabotage her sister’s relationship, believing that Lena is making a terrible mistake. With the assistance of her friends, she stages an elaborate wedding heist to restore her sister’s independence and the bonds of their relationship.
In this event, Kashif Shaikh, co-founder and president of Pillars Fund (a non-profit organization that amplifies the leadership, narratives, and talents of Muslims in the United States to advance opportunity and justice for all), joined Mona Damluji (Film and Media, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Polite Society.
Biographies
Kashif Shaikh, co-founder and president, Pillars Fund
Moderator Mona Damluji
Mona Damluji is Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has worked as a freelance producer and editing assistant for independent documentary filmmakers and television outlets including PBS, NBC Olympics, and the National Geographic Channel. Mona’s teaching, research and creative work engages underrepresented media histories and cultural studies of energy, cities, and infrastructure centered in the Middle East and its diasporas.
Her current book project, Pipeline Cinema, is a history of how multinational petroleum companies have shaped local cultural norms and global popular imaginaries of oil in Iran and Iraq through film use and cultural sponsorship in the twentieth century. She is the producer of two seasons of the short documentary series The Secret Life of Muslims, and a co-curator of the traveling exhibition Arab Comics: 90 Years of Popular Visual Culture and Multitudes: An Art Exhibit after #muslimban. Mona recently authored Together (Seven Stories Press), a children’s book and poem celebrating the power of collective action.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.
CWC Global
Media are global by nature; they express culture just as much as they transcend borders. The CWC Global series is dedicated to showcasing media from around the world. This series features screenings and events that place UCSB in conversation with international media makers and global contexts across our deeply connected world.