Calcutta Calling
André Hörmann
Germany, 2006
English
16 minutes

Directors: André Hörmann

Chances are you’ve spoken to Ethan Reed over the phone. His real name is Vikeeh Uppal and he is one of over 350,000 people currently working in call centres across India. Calcutta Calling is an energetic and timely snapshot of globalization at work that takes viewers into the quickly expanding world of Business Process Outsourcing. Where young and motivated men like Vikeeh take the opportunity to make a nice living selling everything from cell phones to fire extinguishes to customers in America and Great Britain (for the record, he finds the British more polite). Although, he has never been out of Calcutta, Vikeeh, or Ethan to his customers, works hard to be a top seller in what has become a very competitive industry. He gets tutored in the English language, learns pronunciation from commercials and movies, and watches Manchester United soccer matches to gain insight into people he interacts with on a daily basis. Though he is intent on maintaining Indian values and customs, Western influences have seeped into his life: Nokia is his favourite cell phone brand and Levi’s his favourite jeans.

Director’s Bio

André Hörmann was born in Bremen in 1975. Since 1995, he has works in the Development Company for Television Programs in Düsseldorf, for Potel Film & Medien Company in Ulm, and for Institute for Media Research and Media Development, also in Ulm. From 1997 to 2000 he studied at the Berlin Humboldt University. He continued his studies at Konrad Wolf Academy for Film and TV in Potsdam, where he graduated in 2006. In 2004 he spent six months in Hanoy, Vietnam, as an exchange student and the year after he spent three months on exchange in Calcutta. Without Breath is his Potsdam Academy graduation film.