NY Indian American Film Fest 2011

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 02 May 2011 10:00

Written by L E Shannon

The 11th Annual New York Indian American Film Festival (NYIFF) runs May 4 - 8, 2011 at the Tribeca Cinemas in lower Manhattan, New York City, the oldest and most prestigious Indian film festival in the country.

The Festival is presented annually by The Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC), a not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization whose mission is to promote and build the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America.

"The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. The focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India to exhibit, perform and produce their works here."

Says NYIFF Director Aseem Chhabra: "...film lovers in the greater New York area will see an array of unique stories and meet and interact with the filmmakers.  We are presenting a wonderful mix of films from India and other parts of the subcontinent as well as the Diaspora -- a blend of works by young independent filmmakers and a few masters," he adds. 

"The program represents films from Mumbai as well as other regional filmmaking centers in the subcontinent. Many of the films we are presenting are world and US premieres."

The Opening Night film is Disney’s first live action Indian film, Do Dooni Chaar, directed by Habib Faisal and starring Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh Kapoor. The film screens at the Paris Theater, and the director and cast members will be attending for a post-screening discussion.

The Centerpiece selection is Iti Mrinalini directed by Aparna Sen, with Konkona Sen Sharma, Aparna Sen, Priyanshu Chatterjee, Rajat Kapoor, Koushik Sen. An ageing actress is preparing to end her own life and starts destroying all her belongings to keep them from the press. She uncovers items from a life she hardly realized she had lived. 

The Closing Night selection is Nauka Dubi, directed by Rituparno Ghosh, with Raima Sen, Riya Sen, Jishu Sengupta, Priyanshu Chatterjee. The film is based on the novel The Wreck by Rabindranath Tagore. 

Documentaries include:

Bhopali
directed by Max Carlson
This is a moving account of the suffering that still exists today after the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak, which was one of the world's worst industrial disasters.

Holy Kitchens – Karma to Nirvana
directed by Vikas Khanna
The Holy Kitchens film series is an attempt to tie together the meaning of food in religion with the real world experience of sharing food in a spiritual context. The sharing of food and the concept of service to one’s fellow man is tightly woven into the principles of karma as set forth in the Bhagavad-Gita.

You Don’t Belong
directed by Spandan Banerjee
The filmmaker searches for the elusive author of a song, popular in collective memory as a traditional folk song. The film asks some important questions about the encounter between art and mass production, creation and ownership, in a country rich with myriad folk and oral traditions.

World Premiere

A Decent Arrangement
directed by Sarovar Banka
With Shabana Azmi, Adam Laupus, Lethia Nall, Diksha Basu
The cross-cultural love story of an Indian-American man and the American woman he meets in India.

U.S. Premiere

Yeh Saali Zindagi
directed by Sudhir Mishra
With Irrfan Khan (Slumdog Millionaire, The Namesake), Arunoday Singh, Chitrangda Singh, Aditi Rao, Saurabh Shukla, Sushant Singh, Yashpal Sharma, Prashant Narayanan
In this romantic crime drama, a man has to save the woman he loves. But for that, he first has to save the man she loves: the future son-in-law of a powerful Minister.

Raakh Redux
directed by Aditya Bhattacharya
With Aamir Khan, Supriya Pathak, Pankaj Kapur, Jagdeep, Master Ahmed Khan, Naina Balsaver
A young man‛s girlfriend brutally suffers at the hands of a gang from a powerful crime family. When he finds no help or justice, he changes -- and handles the payback himself. The new digitally remastered version of the Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan‛s early hit.

Other features include:

Daayen Ya Baayen
directed by Bela Negi
With Deepak Dobriyal, Aditi Beri, Bharti Bhatt, Jeetendra Bisht
A failed actor in Mumbai returns to his small Himalayan village to make a new start and finds himself a fish out of water. When he wins a car in a contest, he counts on the rest of his luck changing as well.

Geeta in Paradise
directed by Benny Mathews
With Parul Bhatia, Purab Kohli, Ishaan Akhtar, Zeenat Aman
A bored housewife takes it into her head to kidnap a renegade popular filmmaker in the hope of having her fantasy life finally become real -- but it‛s not quite the way she expected.

10ml Love
directed by Sharat Katariya
With Rajat Kapoor, Tisca Chopra, Purab Kohli, Tara Sharma, Koel Purie, Neel Bhoopalam, Manu Rishi
Mini loves Neel who loves Shweta who loves Peter. Enter the quintessential druid-Ghalib with a concoction that promises to solve all their problems. But what happens when Ghalib’s secret potion falls in to the wrong hands? A delightful contemporary turn on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Children's Afternoon: A screening of the first 3D version of The Ramayana, the most beloved of all Indian stories, in CG animation from producer Ketan Mehta.

The Legend of Rama
directed by Chetan Desai
With the voices (in English) of Randeep Hooda, Nandana Sen, Gulshan Grover, Kabir Bedi
Rama, the handsome prince of Ayodhays, is in exhile with the beautiful Sita and his valiant brother Laxman. One day Sita is kidnapped by the mighty Ravana, the demon king. Rama and Laxman begin their search for Sita with the help of the monkey-god Hanuman.
 
For more information, go to www.iaac.us/NYIFF2011.

New York Indian American Film Festival
May 4 - 8, 2011

Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street
New York City
212-941-2001

Opening Night screening:

Paris Theatre
4 W 58th Street
New York City

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