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Liz Mermin

Directing

Known For

Office Tigers
6.0

There was a time, not so long ago, when multi-national corporations saw the developing world merely as a source for natural resources and cheap labor. No longer. In recent years, corporations have opened back offices in countries where costs are low and ambition is high, most notably in India. The companies that house and staff these offices are known as BPOs Business Process Outsourcing companies. Office Tigers is set in the crème de la crème of BPOs, a multi-national company that provides high-end support work to the worlds top legal firms, investment banks, and consultancies. It takes us inside the closed world of corporate outsourcing. It introduces us to ambitious and charismatic Office Tiger employees, models for the new global economy, and the Americans who strive to guide them in their quest to join the ranks of the global business elite. The results are mixed often comic, occasionally brilliant.

Office Tigers

2006Movie
Shot in Bombay

A fast-paced, feature-length documentary which goes beyond the tinselly glamour of Bollywood to expose the industry's rather less alluring underbelly. The Mumbai film industry has long been rumoured to be associated with crime syndicates. The connection was publicly established when, in July 2007, one of India's superstars, Sanjay Dutt, was convicted of possessing firearms which were linked to India's 9/11 - the day in 1993 when Mumbai suffered 13 terrorist bomb blasts in the space of two hours. As full of sudden reversals as any thriller, this documentary follows Sanjay Dutt as he makes Shootout In Lokhandwala, his last film before being sentenced. He plays a real-life Mumbai police officer, AA Khan, who became a local hero after a fatal shootout with criminals in which 1,400 rounds of ammunition were fired. The documentary subtly underlines the ironies of this situation and has as colourful a cast of its own as any Bollywood movie. (Storyville)

Shot in Bombay

2008Movie
No image
7.0

What happens when a group of hairdressers from America travel to Kabul with the intention of telling Afghan women how to do hair and makeup? This engaging, optimistic documentary tracks a unique development project: a shiny new beauty school, funded in part by beauty-industry mainstays, which sets out to teach the latest cutting, coloring, and perming techniques to practicing and aspiring Afghan hairdressers and beauticians. The American teachers, all volunteers, include three Afghan-Americans returning home for the first time in over twenty years. The Beauty Academy of Kabul offers a rare glimpse into Afghan women’s lives, and documents the poignant and often humorous process through which women with very different experiences of life come to learn about one another.

The Beauty Academy of Kabul

2004Movie