The Lunchbox, a film showcasing Indian customs pertaining to food and love, will be screened at The Athena Cinema on Wednesday.
Every day for lunch, wives in Mumbai prepare homemade food to have it delivered to their spouses who work in the city. The lunches are then collected, taken to the correct workplace and given to the corresponding person.
The Athena Cinema, 20 S. Court St., will be showing the film The Lunchbox, which shows the transportation and distribution of the lunches in a cinematic and entertaining fashion. The free screening of The Lunchbox is at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
The people who deliver the lunchboxes are called dabbawalas and transport approximately 200,000 boxes per day, according to the official site of Mumbai Dabbawala.
Theresa Moran, the director of the food studies theme in the College of Arts and Sciences, said this year is the second time the program has partnered with the Athena for the Food on Film series. Each film in the series takes place in a different location, but food is always a congruent component. The film that was shown during the Fall Semester focused on Japanese cuisine, whereas The Lunchbox is centered in the country of India.
“The American understanding of Indian food is two things: curry and naan,” Moran said. “This gives us the opportunity to highlight the variety (in Indian cuisine).”
Moran added that the film is “an accidental love story,” which was an important factor in choosing the film, because it will be screened three days after Valentine’s Day.
“It’s about how you fall in love through food, even if you’ve never met the person, because you taste the love in the creation of the food,” Moran said.
Following the movie, a panel of students from India will discuss the authenticity of the film, Moran said. One of the students sitting on the panel is Sneha Pandya.
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“(The Lunchbox) might be a combination of two stories, but no one has claimed that it is based on one particular story,” Pandya, a graduate student studying physics, said.
Pandya said she has seen people in Mumbai carrying the lunches through the train stations. She added that the deliverers ride bikes to the train station, take the train to where they need to go and then ride the bikes to their destination.
Alexandra Kamody, the director at the Athena, said The Lunchbox played at the Athena during the International Film and Video Festival last year. After looking at several films, she added that The Lunchbox seemed like a “perfect fit.”
“Sometimes, it’s just nice to get a chance to bring back something that was only seen for a short amount of time and, after some buzz, has been spread about it,” Kamody said.
She added that it is nice to have programs, such as the Food on Film Series, that require a collaborative effort so she can get input from people in town and the university.
“We think it’s a great partnership,” Kamody said. “Movies and food go hand-in-hand, and I would love to see (this series) develop.”
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