MUMBAI: As part of the Maximum India Festival that is being held from 1 to 20 March In Washington DC, three films that include Satyajit Ray‘s Pather Panchali, Ketan Mehta‘s Mirch Masala and Aamir Khan’s Dhobi Ghat will be screened at the John F. Kennedy Centre on the last day. The festival has been featuring dance, music, cinema, literature, theatre and cuisine of India.

Pather Panchali was Ray‘s debut film and the first of his ‘Apu trilogy‘. The film had a universal humanist appeal and dealt with the grim struggle for survival by a poor family. The remaining two films of the trilogy, Aparajito and Apur Sansar, follow Apu as the son, the man and finally the father.

Mirch Masala, set in pre-Independence India, tells the story of a beautiful and confident woman whose husband is away in the city. She spurns the advances of the tax collector, who is known for demanding more than taxes, and flees to a spice factory.

Dhobi Ghat is the story of four different people in the city of Mumbai who get entwined by fate and luck.

Apart from him being present at the screening of his film, Mehta will also be a part of a panel discussion on Indian women in films on 15 March that would be moderated by Nandita Das with Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, director Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Dilip Basu in the panel.