Writer, director, videographer & performer Ali Zaidi
For the Melbourne Arts Festival "Journeys of love and more love", we entered the Art House in North Melbourne and took our seats at an elegant dinner table adajecent to a large video screen illustrating kaleidoscopic frangipani. The ambience created made participants feel as though they were a guest at a close friends wedding.
Then Journeys of Love's creator Ali Zaidi (''Indian by birth, Pakistani by migration and British by chance'') welcomes us and begins to walk about the room telling us his story. His journey from Bombay to Lahore to London is interlaced with vivid and emotional evocations of people and accompanyed by documentary footage, family photos and interviews with international histroians, philopshers who discuss their views on food, love, migration and cultural identity.
The evening was presented in three parts; growing up as the middle child in India, acting in his director-father's movies in Pakistan, and his ''coming out'' after moving to London.
During the interludes Zaidi invites us to sample some of cu.sines from his history and experiences. Delicious selections of oriental food, exquisitely prepared, aromatically nuanced and beautifully shaped. Most signifantly, the sharing of food weaved a special magic and by the end of the evening, we started conversing with fellow companions at our table about our experiences and personal journeys.
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