Offsite9: Jambo Cinema - Dawinder Bansal
Jambo cinema interrogates the complex, nostalgic, humorous and sometimes painful processes of remembrance. Dawinder Bansal recreates her father's shop in this iteration of Jambo cinema, which sold electrical supplies and also rented Bollywood VHS tapes to establish their newly immigrated South Asian family.
Can you explain the central premise of Jambo Cinema?
Jambo Cinema is a love letter to my late father, who died in 1988 one month after my eleventh birthday. He was a qualified electrician when he arrived in the UK from Kenya and worked primarily within British Steel until he was made redundant in his late thirties. After this, he opened Bansal Electrical, a shop situated in the Whitmore Reans area of Wolverhampton. It was an electrical shop but also rented out Bollywood VHS tapes to the local South Asian community in the area.
Jambo Cinema is a step back in time, taking audiences on a journey into my life growing up in 1980s Wolverhampton as the youngest daughter to first generation immigrant parents. As the artist, I invite people into the re-creation of my living room - a space that is familiar and reflective of how many South Asian families lived during the 1980s. This multi layered work opens up opportunities for discourse, an opportunity for conversation and I encourage people from other cultures and communities to be curious and ask questions about whatever they want within that space. I feel this is particularly important after rising racial tensions reported in the global news, particularly throughout the pandemic.
In the film, I talk about my life as a young British Asian girl, born into a Sikh Indian-Kenyan family and my experience of living in two worlds, the culture and heritage of my parents and of Britain - the place of my birth. I talk about the importance and value of video rental shops and why they were so valuable to South Asian immigrant families within a turbulent decade of 1980s Britain.
Jambo Cinema is a piece of work with heart, it’s warm, friendly and reflects the life of my family that is reflective of many South Asian households across the UK.
How has the City of Wolverhampton fed into the project?
Wolverhampton is a central part of Jambo Cinema because this project is based on my own life story and the observations I made. It is partly about my own life but also a social commentary on how South Asian families lived, worked, socialised and made gloomy and grey Britain their homelands through faith, culture and entertainment through the humble VHS that provided a connection to the motherland.
What moves you to reflect upon your own childhood experiences?
I have very vivid memories about my childhood, mainly because the 80s was such an iconic era of British and American culture but also because I was immersed into Bollywood via the films I watched at home while carrying out video piracy! I was particularly interested in telling the story of my youth because it is my lived experience and it’s truthful. The best art is that which is born from truth and this work is about letting the wider British community understand the life of someone who was growing up in two worlds, that of the British culture and the other of home life - a traditional upbringing informed by my parents’ heritage of 1950s India and Kenya they left behind to move to the UK.
How do you hope contemporary audiences will respond to the project?
Jambo Cinema invites people into the intimate world of my life and allows people to experience what a 1980s living room of the South Asian community might have been like. Young people are usually fascinated by the analogue world of the 1980s, while being totally confused about how VHS tapes and music cassettes work. Older people find it to be a familiar living room which takes them back to their own youth. The video shop is a totally confusing space for young people who are digital natives and have all their content streamed directly to their phones or laptops.
When I am in the installation, I enjoy hosting audiences who enter the room as my guests and when possible, I offer them tea and biscuits as if they are really entering my living room. The one thing I enjoy most about this project is speaking to people and watching how they interact and absorb the film and interact with the environment I have created. It’s a very intimate thing to do, to put your life into the public domain but it’s also about honesty and that allows me to connect with everyday people through being honest about my own working-class background and youngest daughter to twice migrant parents who worked very hard to give their children the kind of future they could never have. It's a celebration of difference and ultimately making it in the UK.