Hooray for Bollywood …

Day two of the 2005 Spokane International Film Festival began for me at 10 a.m. when I joined festival director, Bob Glatzer, and our co-host (and my wife) Mary Pat Treuthart to tape the weekly show that we do for Spokane Public Radio . Our special guest this morning was Bharatbala, the director of the festival’s opening-night feature, “Hari Om.”

By the way, you can listen to the show at 6:05 tonight and at the same time Saturday on Spokane Public Radio’s other site, KSFC .

Bharatbala said he is curious to see how American audiences are going to react to his film. If the audience at Thursday’s premiere is any indication, they should like it just fine. Of course, Americans in general aren’t the most sophisticated in their tastes – or knowledge. We’ve just gotten used to Bollywood (“Lagaan”), and now we – or the folks who buy such films for distribution – think that all such film need to be romantic musicals. “The Guru,” for example. Yet Bharatbala has at least one thing in his favor: Films such as “Hari Om,” though, are closer to that confection known as Bollywood than anything by, say, Satyajit Ray .

Anyway, the festival continues tonight with the Japanese film “The Vibrator” (preceded by he short film “Commentary: On”) at 5:30 and the documentary “David Hockney: The Colors of Music” at 8:30 (preceded by the short “Through My Thick Glasses”).

I’m going to take a nap now.