aging

JACKPOT takes the viewer inside the sometimes strange, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and always compelling world of hardcore Bingo players. With their army of lucky charms at their side, their 20 cards laid out in front of them, and their hopes and dreams riding on the next number out of the machine, these passionate players have devoted an innumerable amount of money, time, and effort to the pursuit of a game that does not require skill but rather patience, determination, and a great deal of luck. As the we peel away the layers, JACKPOT becomes about more than the game of Bingo, it becomes about the nature of luck, superstition, chance, and the need for human beings to feel like victory is possible, even if it is always just one number away.

Following the international success of Deepa Mehta’s Oscar-nominated film Water, which has achieved, to date, sales of over $15 million and more than 1,000,000 viewers, Ms. Mehta received thousands of letters from the audience. Set in 1938 Colonial India against Mahatma Gandhi's rise to power, Water is about eight-year-old child bride Chuyia, who is widowed and sent to an ashram where Hindu widows must live out their remaining days in penitence. After viewing the film, many wanted to know more about the state of widows in India today. The Forgotten Woman was made in direct response to this interest and aims to bring about an understanding of the destitution and marginalization of many of the millions of widows in India today, who are forced by age-old traditions to live out their remaining years isolated from and shunned by the society at large. The film explores how these widows, coerced by their families to give up their possessions, become non-entities in society. The Forgotten Woman aims to create greater awareness of the fact that in the 21st century, there are still numerous and wide spread issues surrounding women’s search for economic independence in order to attain a modicum of dignity, self-sufficiency and basic human dignity.