From May 7 to 14, film enthusiasts will enjoy a line-up of independent, art house, alternate, and diaspora films connected to the Indian subcontinent at the 16th New York Indian Film Festival.
Organizers have in store 40 screenings (35 narrative, 5 documentary), all seen for the first time in New York City. In addition, the festival will also feature five programs of short films.
The festival highlights various cinemas of India’s different regions. All the films are subtitled in English and some of the languages this year include Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telegu, Assamese, Haryanvi and Urdu.
This year’s festival will feature a couple of sidebars — National Film Development Corporation of India-restored first films of filmmakers and a three-generations sidebar, films of Bimal Roy, Basu Bhattacharya and Aditya Bhattacharya.
There are two National Award winners, ‘Famous in Ahmedabad’ and ‘Daarvatha,’ among the 40 or so shorts being screened.
The festival’s film lineup includes 2016 National Award winners, ‘A Far Afternoon,’ ‘Birds With Large Wings,’ and ‘The River of Fables,’ an Assamese language feature film.
Straight from the Sundance Film Festival is the Indian teenage comedy, ‘Brahman Naman,’ from the Tamil film world, ‘Crime in Punishment,’ by 2015 NYIFF award winner M. Manikandan, and a documentary on Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, ‘For the Love of a Man.’
Among diaspora films is ‘Good Ol’ Boy,’ a feel-good, coming-of-age story of Smith, a 10-year old growing up in small-town America in 1979, featuring some well-known actors in Samrat Chakrabarti and Poorna Jagannathan.
Bengali master, Soumitra Chatterjee stars in ‘Peace Haven,’ the story of three septuagenarian friends who embark on a journey to build their very own mortuary.
Multiple award winner and fresh from the international film festival circuit, ‘Parched,’ is about four ordinary women in rural Gujarat who talk unapologetically about men, sex and life as they struggle with their individual boundaries.
The highlight is the world premiere of ‘Kagaz Ki Kashti’ (aka ‘Paperbot’), which tracks the life of a down-to-earth, small-town boy, who made it big in the Ghazal world breaking through the norms and mixing western instrumentation, to make this classical genre simple and hummable.
“The 2016 festival features a wide array of films from all over the South Asian diaspora,” says Indo American Arts Council founder, Aroon Shivdasani, “This year our films reflect the reality of India, dealing both with LGBT issues that have surfaced in the supreme court and on the streets, as well as strong feminist films dealing with female infanticide, child marriage, domestic abuse, trafficking and several other key issues that affect women in a world that still leans towards chauvinism.”
For more information visit iaac.us.
Sourced from NewsIndiaTimes.com