The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIF) will kick off its weeklong festivities with a star-studded Opening Night red carpet premiere, which will take place at a prestigious new opening venue for the Festival, the Skirball Center for Performing Arts on April 30 and will conclude on May 4. The NYIF is the oldest and most prestigious film festival in the United States and is dedicated to displaying, promoting and building an awareness of Independent, art-house, alternate and diaspora films from, about and connected to the Indian subcontinent.

Festival screenings will take place throughout the week at Tribeca Cinemas, with the Closing Night selection to be followed by the annual awards ceremony and after-party at the Skirball Center for Performing Arts.

NYIFF's selection committee, led by Film Festival Director and noted film journalist Aseem Chhabra, will consider submissions for narrative and documentary features and shorts. The final submission deadline is February 8; extended deadline for Withoutabox members is February 15. All filmmakers can find details on the organization's web site: www.iaac.us.

This year also marks the launch of a new award at the 2013 Festival that will honor student-created short films (five minute or less). Through open, no-fee submissions from film schools, one student will be selected to receive a special award at the Closing Night Award Ceremony. In conjunction with their stellar cinematic line-up, NYIFF also presents excellent, informative networking events in the form of industry panels, which explore in depth topics such as financing, distribution, and production in an increasingly global market, and are helmed by esteemed experts in the film industry.

The NYIF, which was initially called as the IAAC Film Festival, was launched in 2001 following the devastation of the September 11 attacks on New York City. This festival creates awareness and better understanding of the people and stories from the Indian Diaspora by bringing the most acclaimed feature films, documentaries, and shorts from that region to New York. Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding closed IAAC's first festival before its worldwide theatrical release. Since then, the festival has provided first-looks at many acclaimed films, including Deepa Mehta's Water, Nair's The Namesake, the Sundance audience award-winning Valley of Saints, Gangs of Wasseypur Part 1 among others. It also hosted the New York Premiere of Danny Boyles Slumdog Millionaire.

The festival has been supported and backed by prominent Desi artists such as Nair, Mehta, Salman Rushdie, Madhur Jaffrey, Padma Lakshmi, Shabana Azmi, Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Singh Kapoor, Shashi Tharoor, and the late Ismail Merchant.

"I am thrilled to entertain, educate and challenge audiences with yet another year of fantastic Independent films from every country in the Indian subcontinent as well as the global Indian diaspora," says IAAC Executive Director Aroon Shivdasani. Whereas, film festival director Aseem Chhabra added, "We are particularly excited about this year's festival since it marks 100 years of Indian cinema. As such, we are curating a series of recently restored classics from India, never seen before in this condition. There is no better place for these films to be showcased than at this year's NYIF."