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| New York Cool / Wendy Wi l liams |
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Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta
Photo Credit: Michael Toolan |
Buzz Column:
Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta held a press conference today
at the new Museum of Arts and Design Auditorium at 2 Columbus
Circle, New York City. (The museum is housed in the old "cottage
cheese" building on Columbus Circle.) Mehta and Rushdie
announced that Mehta will make the film version of Rushdie's
"Booker of Booker's" prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children.
Mehta will start filming in March of 2009.
Film Listings:
DEEPA MEHTA’S “HEAVEN ON EARTH”
TO OPEN INDIAN
FILM FESTIVAL IN NEW YORK NOVEMBER 5-9
The Eighth Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film
Festival opens on November 5 at Jazz at Lincoln Center with
Deepa Mehta’s HEAVEN ON EARTH, a bold film using Indian
mythology underpinnings that soar into modern magical realism
to examine the inner world of an Indian immigrant to Canada.
The five-day festival will screen New York and US premieres of
independent Indian and Diaspora films at the Museum of Arts
and Design, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Tribeca Cinemas.
“The juxtapositional uptown – downtown presentation of the
festival is reflected in the programming by our new Festival
Director, L. Somi Roy,” said Aroon Shivdasani, Executive Director
of the Indo-American Arts Council. “From classic films to
emerging forms to global cinema by filmmakers of Indian origin
in the UK, US and Canada and regional Indian cinema in
Malayalam, Punjabi, Marathi and Bengali, the 8th MIAAC Film
Festival offers a wide range of films from established and
emerging filmmakers.”
The festival features premieres of fiction and non-fiction films by
internationally renowned Indian filmmakers such as Adoor
Gopalakrishnan’s interlinked stories in FOUR WOMEN; and Ketan
Mehta’s COLOURS OF PASSION, on Raja Ravi Varma, the Indian
artist who dared to paint and mass-market his paintings of Hindu
gods and goddesses. Young filmmakers like Richie Mehta, whose
touching debut feature AMAL looks at the value of modern India;
and Manu Rewal, whose black comedy LOVE BRIBES ETC. reveals
the harrowing workings of the Indian bureaucracy, show the new
face of Indian and Diaspora cinema.
The veteran director Shyam Benegal is represented by his epic
BOSE: THE FORGOTTEN HERO. The dramatic biography of the
Indian nationalist leader who took up arms and allied with the
Axis Powers, provides a counterpoint to T.C. McLuhan’s THE
FRONTIER GANDHI: BADSHAH KHAN, A TORCH OF PEACE, a
documentary that tells the extraordinary story of a leader who
was born into the inconceivable violence of Pashtun warrior
society but adopted the non-violent struggle of Gandhi. Revisiting
history takes a new British turn in the festival with MOTHER
INDIA 21st CENTURY REMIX, a media performance based on the
great Indian epic Mother India by the London arts group Kala
Phool, featuring live musicians and DJ Tigerstyle; and British
Asian composer Nitin Sawhney’s new score for Franz Osten’s
ravishing 1929 silent classic A THROW OF DICE and performed
by the London Symphony Orchestra. The British Asian
contribution also includes Shamim Sarif’s I CAN’T THINK
STRAIGHT, a tender romantic comedy about a British Asian
woman and Palestinian-Jordanian woman in London, and 60x60,
a video installation of 1-minute films at Aicon Gallery by 20
artists each from the UK, India and Pakistan.
A special selection
of films examines the genre of Indian films known popularly as
Bollywood, with documentaries on background dancers (Vinay
Chowdhry’s PERSONALITY), the art of music composition
(Brahmanand Singh’s PANCHAM UNMIXED on R.D. Burman, the
great Indian composer) and the making of an action film (Liz
Mermin’s SHOT IN BOMBAY). A retrospective section featuring
Ketan Anand’s CHETAN ANAND: THE POETICS OF FILM, which
surveys the work of his father, will be accompanied by a rare
archival screening of the latter’s LOWLY CITY, the first Indian film
to be shown (and to win the Grand Prix) at Cannes in 1946, and
the first film with a score by Ravi Shankar.
The 8th MIAAC Film
Festival also features special panels organized by the
Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) and New York Women in
Film and Television (NYWIFT). An additional panel called
SHOOTING IN INDIA is designed for US filmmakers interested in
producing in India.
The festival’s centerpiece, SLUMDOG
MILLIONAIRE, is the latest film by Danny Boyle, the acclaimed
director of 28 Days, Trainspotting and other films. This
Dickensian dazzler, winner of the Audience Award at the 2008
Toronto Film Festival, is about a young man from the slums of
Bombay whose earnings on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be
a Millionaire? begin to mount to unsettling and gigantic
proportions. The festival will close with LITTLE ZIZOU, awardwinning
screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala's directorial debut,
presented by her long-time collaborator Mira Nair. Religious
bigots and reformers clash in this funny satire set in the Felliniesque
world of India's educated, eccentric, miniscule Parsi
community.
_For tickets (on sale October 15) and a full list of films at this
year's festival, visit http://www.iaac.us/MIAAC2008/index.htm |
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About the Indo-American Arts Council
The Indo-American Arts
Council is a registered not-for-profit arts organization
passionately dedicated to showcasing, building awareness, and
celebrating artists of Indian origin in the performing, visual and
literary arts. Annual festivals of art, dance, playwrighting and
film are scheduled through the year, with several special events
and book launches.
For further information please visit www.iaac.us.
The IAAC Film Festival was born in the aftermath
of 9/11 in response to Mayor Giuliani’s call to New Yorkers to
help rebuild a limping city. The First Annual film Festival opened
its doors with Film Diaspora Godfather Ismail Merchant and
closed with New York’s favorite Indian filmmaker Mira Nair. Three
years ago, Mahindra & Mahindra joined forces with the IAAC Film
Festival by becoming the lead sponsor, changing the name of the
festival to The MIAAC Film Festival.
For further information
please visit www.iaac.us. |
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