NYIFF – A Feast of Award-Winning Indian Films in New York Anupam Kher,…
Browsing: New York Indian Film Festival
Film journalist Aseem Chhabra is a great believer in the power of cinema to heal and rejuvenate. Instead of an apple a day, his mantra is a film a day and he often watches 365 films in a year. The veteran of several film festivals, he has traveled to many across the globe, and has captained the ship of New York Indian Film Festival
How can it be summer without the New York Indian Film Festival? Through ups and downs, its cinematic wisdom has seen us through good times and bad, and showed us the better sides of our nature. The good news is that NYIFF – one of the pure delights of NY- is back
A world-class music concert, a major dance festival, a film festival are the delights of summer, must-see events on our social calendar. In years past each was a much anticipated real life event, with dressed-up crowds meeting their friends and rubbing shoulders with celebrities. Here we share the past memories and how each event has been reborn, reinvented this year.
We all love stories and cinema is the ultimate story-teller which spins magical tales of love and loss, set in unimagined realms. Sometimes cinema is a mirror of society, sometimes a celebration of the imagination and the invincibility of the human spirit. It is always the magician which draws us into people’s lives
Yes, it’s that time of the year when New Yorkers get wrapped up in intriguing cinema from the Indian sub-continent, wonderful stories of the diaspora and varied lives – thanks to the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) which has been a gift of the Indo-American Arts Council and Aroon Shivdasani to New York City
The New York Indian Film Festival, organized by the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) has always prided itself on being about real people, ordinary people, and at the cinematic table there’s room for stories from every kind of independent film maker, in every format and in every regional language.
4150 people reached on FB Lassi with Lavina page Opening Night at the New York…
dmit it – sometimes you just want to run away from mundane real life!
Well, here’s the perfect antidote, the perfect escape route… you get to follow four feisty Indian women and their secret desires, meet a famous sibling pair of filmmakers, encounter the truth about the controversial politico Arvind Kejriwal, come face to face with Satyajit Ray’s fascinating detective Feluda and check out two of your favorite stars who are picking up the megaphone and turning director! You even get to see the life story of a porn star turned Bollywood actor!
Film festivals are always a draw – so say you come just for the movies but admit it, you’re also there to see the actors and the directors, to rub shoulders with celebrity and perhaps share a drink with the Starry Ones!
Sometimes there’s a film so emotionally wrenching and yet so life-affirming that you just have to see it. Such a film is Shonali Bose’s ‘Margarita with a straw’ which opens the New York Indian Film Festival. In this unusual love story, a middle-class Indian teenager with cerebral palsy longs to experience that most basic of human desires – a love relationship. Sex and the disabled are hardly ever talked of in the same breath, and this brave film takes on this taboo topic
Anurag Kashyap. Aparna Sen. Buddhadeb Dasgupta. Gurinder Chadha. Nagesh Kuknoor. Nagraj Manjule. What if they all wandered into the New York night with megaphones and cameras and created their own tapestry of the city? While that did not happen, the combined star wattage of several talented directors certainly amped up the proceedings at the recent New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF).
It was quite surreal to sit just seats away from noted directors and dissect the movies with them after the screenings. What you realized was that all these directors were passionate fans of cinema and as anxious to catch new, offbeat films as the next moviegoer!
Dekh, cinema, dekh! In the old days, people in small towns and villages in India would wait anxiously for the traveling cinema to come to them with surprise offerings and entertainment.
In a way, the annual New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) does the same thing for New Yorkers who are a savvy lot. Yet the festival brings unexpected cinematic treats of found gems, lost stories and glimpses into lives lived.
“One day you are uprooted and told that this is not your home any more. Not only that – this is a different country altogether!
Then follows an insane bloodshed which scars the lives of friends and neighbors for years to come. I cannot understand this absurdity. I find it very stupid, drawing lines on paper and fighting over land. The worst is we continue to thrive on hatred, the seeds of which were sown in 1947.”
– Nitin Kakkar, director of ‘Filmistan’ which has won the 2013 National Award for best Hindi film.
Few 100-year-olds are this vibrant but Indian Cinema has all the sass and punch in its centenary year and we can expect exciting things from an industry which has embraced so many different genres. The upcoming New York Indian Film Festival, presented by Indo-American Arts Council, promises to serve up a feast of movies which are making waves. So here’s to a taste of cinema, past and present.
“All the film industry is going to Cannes to celebrate the 100th year of Indian cinema. We are the perfect global kick-off because in 1913 on May 4th was the first-ever Indian movie – and that’s the date of our closing night!” said Aroon Shivdasani, the Executive Director of IAAC, who along with Aseem Chhabra, director of the festival, has selected the eclectic mix of films.
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Like any good movie, the five-day festival had lots of action, drama, side stories and even back stories. There were panels, discussions, parties and after-parties, all a shorthand for absorbing the diverse material and networking with film buffs.
It was in many ways a New York story, with the opening day red carpet taking place outside the historic Paris Theater (a favorite of the late Ismail Merchant), right opposite the glitzy Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Horse carriages trotted by near Central Park, horns honked as cars sped and pedestrians rushed by in frentic NY fashion, a few stopping to see what the hullabaloo was about.
2012 marks the 100th year of Indian Cinema, so what better time to go on a filmi marathon?
Luckily, the 2012 New York Indian Film Festival is just around the corner, so we can eat, drink and dream cinema for 5 days!
But Indian cinema is so much more than just Bollywood and here are 10 tips to help you get the best of this multifaceted festival which brings you a rich mix of regional and Hindi cinema.
The 12th annual New York Indian Film Festival is presented by Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) and runs May 23-27
This has been quite a year for noted actor and activist Shabana Azmi who was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India. She’s just finished Deepa Mehta’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ based on Salman Rushdie’s novel and is currently making a film with Vishal Bharadwaj. She has been chosen by TIME Magazine as 1 of 25 Asian heroes and is the only woman amongst 4 Indians on the list.
Now comes her New York minute! Shabana Azmi was presented a proclamation by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development for her commitment to the arts and contributions to New York City’s film industry.