“I never suspicion dancing and singing actors got awards!!” – Bollywood star Rishi Kapoor looked truly happy, bounding onto a theatre during a Asia Society, on New York’s Park Avenue, to accept his endowment for Best Actor during a shutting rite of a New York Indian Film Festival on Sunday, May 8th. For a eleven years of a existence, a Indo-American Arts Council’s annual film festival has brought New York’s culturally worldly South Asian assembly and artists, both US-based and India-based, together for an well-developed four-day weekend of screenings, conversations, row discussions, and parties, as good as providing an intensely singular eventuality for a incomparable New York village to see cinema and accommodate filmmakers from a widest operation of South Asian industries.

This year’s eager ability closing-night assembly enjoyed not usually a awards rite though also a reverence to India’s Nobel Prize honoree Rabindranath Tagore in respect of a 150th anniversary of his birth. The shutting eventuality featured a premier screening of Noukadubi [Shipwreck], Rituparno Ghosh’s overwhelming Bengali film formed on a Tagore novel – itself desirous by a stories of shipwrecks and mixed-up identities in some of Shakespeare’s plays. The film was introduced and discussed by Richard Allen, Professor of Cinema Studies during New York University, and Bengali singer and executive Aparna Sen, who acted in Gungat, a unequivocally opposite Bengali film instrumentation of a same story, many years ago, and common some reflections on Noukadubi as a surpassing imagining on a doubt of what a matrimony unequivocally is.

Then it was on to a awards rite and amping adult a frolic considerably, Rishi’s Best Actor endowment was presented to him by Neetu Singh, who starred with her father for a initial time in thirty years in a Disney-backed eccentric Hindi family comedy Do Dooni Chaar, in a United States premiere screening and a festival’s opening film,.

The passionate mood of a Kapoors was really matched by their energetic accepting from an generally glamorous-looking, mostly-South-Asian audience, with women guest holding a eventuality to move out luxe saris and benefaction stylish churidar-kameez on a poetic open night to emanate an dusk of India-in-Manhattan during a awards eventuality and a jubilee and accepting to follow.

An endowment from a NYIFF carries genuine prestige, and a festival awards rite generates genuine suspense. The New York Indian Film Festival is New York’s oldest Indian Film Festival, and usually a tiny series of films submitted win a screening. As Indo-American Arts Council Executive Director Aroon Shivdasani explained final week, festival prize-winners are comparison by a jury of thirteen film professionals, and their votes are audited by KPMG LLP, a American audit, tax, and advisory services firm. No one knows who is going to win, not even a festival staff or jury, until a impulse when envelopes are non-stop by a presenters onstage.

The films detected and selected for screening by Festival Director Aseem Chhabra, a obvious South Asian party journalist, and his preference committee, are all by and/or about South Asians, this year including filmmakers from a US, Britain, Bangladesh, and Pakistan as good as Mumbai, Bengal, and other film industries of India. 150 films were submitted for care this year for a four-day program, that has altered a name and shifted to a new place on a city’s informative calendar, holding place for a initial time this year in a open instead of a fall.

Awards presented during this year’s festival were as follows:

Best Feature Film: Sthaniya Sambaad, (Bengali), destined by Arjun Gourisaria and Moinak Biswas, who was there to accept a endowment from Salman Rushdie, a long-time festival village member and supporter.

Best Director: Aparna Sen, for Iti Mrinalini (Bengali). Mira Nair, another member of New York’s Indian artistic village who has been benefaction during a festival given a initial days presented a endowment to a director. (An sparkling impulse for a audience, one good and gifted Indian lady executive presenting an respect to another.)

Best Actor: Rishi Kapoor for Do Dooni Chaar, (Hindi) enthusiastically presented by Neetu Singh and perceived that approach with some cheers as well.

Best Actress: Konkana Sen Sharma for Iti Mrinalini (Bengali). The film was a festival’s Centerpiece selection. Presented by Rishi Kapoor and supposed on interest of Konkana by her mother, Aparna Sen, who pronounced that after Konkana’s new small baby, this endowment would be a subsequent thing to make Konkana happiest.

Best Screenplay: Mohan Raghavan for T.D. Dasan Std, VI B (Malayalam). This endowment was presented by Aparna Sen

Best Documentary: Bhopali (English) – Max Carlson.

Best Short Film: Just That Sort of a Day (English) – Abhay Kumar. Madhur Jaffrey, who has been a clever and pleasing participation in a Festival given a initial year presented this award.

Have a demeanour during some disdainful shots of a event!

Aroon Shivdasani, Indo-American Arts Council Executive Director, and Mira Nair, announcing a endowment to Aparna Sen for Best Director

Aparna Sen, leader of a festival endowment for Best Director for Iti Mrinalini

Aparna Sen receives her endowment for Best Director from Mira Nair (Photo credit: Virginia Kelley)

Neetu SIngh has only presented a festival endowment to Rishi Kapoor for Best Actor (Photo credit: Virginia Kelley)

Salman Rushdie presents a endowment for Best Feature Film to Moinak Biswas for Sthaniya Sambaad

Rishu Kapoor and Neetu Singh Kapoor nearing during a Asia Society, Park Avenue, New York City, for festival shutting ceremony.

Photo credit: MichaelToolan.com