New York Indian Film Festival Returns To In Person Screenings

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 10 May 2023 17:06

Written by Brad Balfour

The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) is four days of screenings, post-screening discussions, industry panels, award ceremonies, and much more focused on Indian and Indian diaspora cinema. Running May 11 to the 14th at multiple venues in NYC, the NYIFF features a massive slate of shorts, features, and documentaries from independent directors. This is the first physical edition of the festival after a three year hiatus.

The festival opens with Three Of Us, directed by Avinash Arun Dhaware.  While grappling with the early symptoms of dementia, Shailaja finds herself at the cusp of her past, present and future. She decides to go on a trip to revisit her childhood before her memories ebb away. Shailaja embarks on a confrontational journey that makes her deal with questions related to a traumatic event in her childhood, the mundanity of her marriage, and the complexity of her future. As Shailaja travels through the sprawling coastline of Konkan with her husband and childhood-love by her side, we see her inching closer towards the forgiveness and liberation she has yearned for. The film will be followed by Q & A with Avinash Arun, Shefali Shah, Jaideep Alhawat, and Swanand Kirkire

Other films include the murder mystery Mushroom, directed by Samik Roy Choudhury. In the documentary One Small Visit, directed by Jo Chim, tells the true story of an immigrant Indian family who unexpectedly passes through the tiny Midwest hometown of Neil Armstrong in the wake of the '69 moon landing and the civil rights movement and ends up on the doorstep of the Armstrong home. NYIFF will also hold a special screening of Rahul Chittella's critically acclaimed film Gulmohar on May 12 at 6.30 PM. In attendance will be actors Sharmila Tagore and Manoj Bajpayee and director Chittella.

To learn more, go to: https://www.nyiff.us/

New York Indian Film Festival
May 11 - 14, 2023

Various Locations

African Film Festival New York: The Cinema of Diaspora

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 10 May 2023 16:32

Written by Brad Balfour

Xalé 

The 30th New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) kicks off at Lincoln Center on May 10, 2023, with a slate of films reflecting African diaspora and a wealth of stories.

“The New York African Film Festival was founded to counteract the voice over, where Africans were being spoken for over grim images and to provide a place where the seventh art could become a weapon for us to reclaim our voices, to reappropriate our images and to add layers to the narrative,” said NYAFF founder and AFF Executive Director Mahen Bonetti. “In each frame presented by the festival over three decades we have found our connection with each other and our footing in other people’s spaces, while presenting myriad stories about all corners of the African diaspora and the human experience itself.”

The festival opens with the New York premiere of Moussa Sène Absa’s Xalé, the third film in his trilogy focused on women. When twin brother and sister Awa and Adama’s grandmother passes away, their Aunt Fatou and Uncle Atoumane pledge to marry to preserve the family union. Tired of waiting to consummate their marriage, Atoumane commits an act from which there is no return.

There will also be the premiere of Hyperlink, an anthology film from South African filmmakers Mzonke Maloney, Nolitha Mkulisi, Julie Nxadi, and Evan Wigdorowitz, centered around the very human foibles of the internet.

Speaking of the internet, the festival will also have AFF Digital, with certain films being streamed online as well as panel discussions and lectures.

The festival continues at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem from May 19 to 21 and culminates at the Brooklyn Academy of Music under the name Film Africa from May 26 to June 1 during Dance Africa.

To learn more, go to: https://africanfilmny.org

African Film Festival New York/
May 10 - June 1, 2023

Various Locations

New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival: 25th Anniversary Edition

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 02 May 2023 13:49

Written by Brad Balfour

Now in its 25th year, the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is running May 7 to 11 at the Center For Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, NY, NY). The festival centers around Jews descended from the Iberian Peninsula, and their history of culture and diasporism.  The festival has a slate of features, documentaries, and shorts from the US, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, and more.

The festival opens with the 1988 documentary From Toledo to Jerusalem, in which Israeli singer and actor Yehoram Gaon retraces the footsteps of Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal after the Expulsion of 1492, and the journey Sephardic Jews have gone on across Europe since then, with each site of the journey is accompanied by music from Gaon. On Monday, May 8 is the world premiere of The Guards of Memory, directed by Said Belli. A documentary set in the Moroccan city of Fez, it looks at the dwindling Jewish population in the city which has persisted for over 2000 years, but faces great hardships.

The comedy Matchmaking, directed by Erez Tadmore, in which a Jewish Orthodox Yeshiva student sets out to woo a Sephardic girl. Offspring, directed by Shirly Sasson-Ezer and Dana Keidar, is a dark comedy about a 32 years old careerist who is struggling to get pregnant amidst massive social pressure. She is dragged to a circumcision ceremony by her superstitious Bukharan grandmother, who has her own grotesque ideas about how to remedy the situation. Live and Become, directed by Radu Mihaileanu, is the story of an Ethiopian boy who is airlifted from a Sudanese refugee camp to Israel in 1984 during Operation Moses. Queen of the Deuce, directed by Valerie Kontakos, is a documentary on Queer icon and 42nd Street sleaze entrepreneur Chelly Wilson, who escaped the Holocaust to become a New York icon.

The Opening Night Ceremony on Monday, May 8th, with the festival’s Pomegranate Award for achievements in the arts will be going out to:

• Hélène Cixous, the Algerian-born, French writer and novelist, who will be the first woman to receive the “Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.”

• Yasmin Levy, the world’s most popular contemporary Ladino singer-songwriter, will receive the “Pomegranate Award for Music.” Opening Night will feature a special performance by Levy.

• Shlomi Elkabetz, the Israeli-born Moroccan screenwriter/director/producer/actor, will receive the “Pomegranate Award for Filmmaking.” Elkabetz, a member of the Jury of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, will be part of the festival’s tribute series to his sister, Ronit Elkabetz, A”H. 

• Ghiora Aharoni, the Israeli-born Yemenite artist and designer, will receive the first “Pomegranate Award for Art, Design, and Architecture.” "Selected works for The Pomegranate Award", an exclusive, limited installation by Aharoni will be presented in the Centre for Jewish History's Great Hall on Opening Night
  
  

To learn more, go to: https://nysjff.eventive.org/welcome

New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival: 25th Anniversary Edition
May 7 - 11, 2023

Streamed online and live at
Center For Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York, NY 10011