time was when a bhaji on the beach symbolised something naughty but nice perhaps a bit like its storyline the british indian heroines of gurinder chadhas 1994 film have an epiphany of sorts on a beach in the english seaside town of blackpool uncharacteristically they have been mingling with the white host community more oddly still they have been questioning the south asian straitjacket of their lives it was clever but hardly cuttingedge cinema fast forward to 2004 and chadhas bride and prejudice is blockbuster big and crossing continents with a publicity budget equivalent to the production expenses of several dozen diaspora films could anything be more symbolic of the multistrand multipolar multiangular growth of brown cinema in the new millennium this is cinema that knows no national boundaries only a loose cultural construct no longer restricted to smallbudget art films created out of a cardboard cup and spare change by earnest brown filmmakers diaspora cinema is variously big or small brown or multicoloured that process can only continue argues nandini sikand a new york filmmaker and tv producer who also teaches indian cinema at college sikands 1998 comingofage film on a young woman in postcolonial india was a selfconfessed attempt to mirror the experiences of her parents begin from the personal and then move towards the universal now she believes the diasporic journey of cinediscovery is well underway in the west and elsewhere and thats for reasons greater than chadha and mira nair gurinders film has managed to benefit from an interest in all things bollywood and bollywoodinspired right now especially in the west says sikand wryly adding that though credit must go to people like chadha and mira nair but also remember that there are many filmmakers curators distributors and academics who have been writing about and screening indian cinema for years in the west that voyage is still underway so where is diaspora cinema headed upwards and out may be the answer many like sikand argue that bride and prejudice is not a sign diaspora cinema has peaked too early and too disappointingly for honourable mention at least part of the reason may be the elasticated branding of diaspora cinema everything is tossed into the one big brown gladstone bag labelled diaspora nairs monsoon wedding and her most recent vanity fair ayub khan dins east is east shekhar kapurs elizabeth and asif kapadias warrior