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“Finding Carlton is a tremendously important component for the teaching of jazz history, beginning with its African American origins and global ramifications… It should be a standard audio/visual component for inclusion in music curriculums!”
   – Dr. Larry Ridley, Jazz Artist/Professor of Music Emeritus, Rutgers University
   www.LarryRidley.com
 
 
“Finding Carlton is a great film to teach about global cultural flows and the complex histories that underlie all cultures. It highlights the cosmopolitanism of the past and breaks down stereotypical ideas about both jazz and India.”

   – Tejaswini Ganti, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Program in Culture & Media, New York University
 
 
“In many societies, intolerance is almost ingrained. The only way to counter it is education in ts largest sense, and jazz falls into that category. Finding Carlton [has] many moments that showcase how jazz has bridged cultures and provided a common language of communication.”

   – Ramu Damodaran, Deputy Director, United Nations Department of Public Information, as reported in the New York Times
 
 
“Finding Carlton gives the history of the relationship between African American musicians and the multiple strata of Indian society. It is an untold story that provides a striking example of the blending of cultures and traditions.”

   – Helena Hansen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, New York University
 
 
“Finding Carlton is a true labor of love. One doesn’t think of the words jazz and India as going together, but Susheel Kurien’s heartwarming documentary takes us on an unexpected journey. Great musicians and fantastic playing are universal. Finding Carlton is absorbing and eye-opening.”

   – Alice Elliott, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Faculty and Academy Award Nominee


PRESS

 
“‘Finding Carlton’ is full of … moments of discovery. The documentary, while tracking jazz’s movements in India, reveals delightful insights about the country itself. Mr. Kurien [has] brought together a menagerie of first-rate raconteurs, from the impishly grinning guitarist Carlton Kitto to the cigar-puffing Bombay bon vivant Stanley Pinto, to Violet Smith, the owner of the Fairlawn Hotel, who regally declares that in 1940s Calcutta, ‘there was no unpleasant music, only jazz.'”

   – Hiten Samtani, the New York Times    (Full article)
 
 
“Finding Carlton is at once illuminating and captivating. Through sterling direction and story-telling, the film manages to preserve Indian jazz culture while also informing even the wisest jazz fan about the music’s migration from American to Europe and to India. It’s a story that has escaped most American jazz listeners until now. …. But perhaps most remarkable is how all jazz musicians – no matter where they reside on the globe – share the same love and veneration for the music and its originators. In Finding Carlton, you see firsthand how jazz has come to be a transnational language.”

   – Marc Myers/JazzWax.com    (Full article)
 
 
“Kurien has a splendid eye — even though this is his first film — for the little human details that bring both individual characters and a larger world (now, perhaps no longer quite so vibrant) into focus and into our hearts. FINDING CARLTON blossoms with lovely montages of the present and the past, the aural and the visual, the moving and the still. It is respectful but never dull, informative but never preachy or didactic.”

   – Michael Steinman – JAZZ LIVES    (Full article)
 
 
“I hope you felt the appreciation of people during and after your showing of the film. It was wonderful. I have images still in my mind. I felt closer to India than ever I have felt, that’s important too, that accomplishment.”

   -Becca Pulliam, WBGO

 

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