Sai Selvarajan who directed the AFI Film “The Management of Grief” will run a half marathon from Oak Cliff, where the film was shot, through Victory Plaza and up the Katy Trail to North Park, where the movie will premiere at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. He plans to allow himself about two hours for the run.
Sai’s short film is “based on the novel by Bharati Mukherjee, which reflects on the aftermath of that fateful day in 1985 when a terrorist bomb crashed the Air India Boeing 747 and killed 329 passengers making it the worst terrorist event in the years prior to the 9/11 attacks on the United States. We follow a grief stricken Shaila Bhave, a Hindu Canadian, whose desperation to make sense of the newly reported death of her husband and two sons, has thrust her onto a journey in search of meaning and justification. Struggling to mesh the two cultures of her Canadian home and her Indian history she sets off for the shores of Ireland where the plane went down, to reclaim the bodies of her beloved family and return them home to India for a proper burial.”
So what does it all have to do with running? AFI Dallas Press Director John Wildman quickly responded to my e-mail containing that very question. “Sai, the director, is an avid runner who actually ran a half marathon prior to shooting this particular film – literally – that day. That would be the connection/reason for the stunt.”
Good enough. Hmmm. I wonder if my running group could follow him Wednesday night, a la “Forrest Gump”.
