New York Indian Film Festival 2017


18th Annual NEW YORK INDIAN FILM FESTIVAL
May 7-12, 2018


JURY MEMBERS
 
Parag Amladi Muriel Peters Joseph Mathew Mirra Bank Yoshita Singh
Parag Amladi Muriel (Mike) Peters Joseph Mathew Mirra Bank Yoshita Singh
Myrna Moncayo-Iyengar Udayan Gupta Tejaswini Ganti Claus Mueller Mrinal Desai
Myrna Moncayo Udayan Gupta Tejaswini Ganti Claus Mueller Mrinal Desai
Arshad Khan Sri Rao      
Arshad Khan Sri Rao      
 

Parag AmladiParag Amladi is a film scholar and educator and has taught film studies and film production first in Bombay at the Xavier Institute of Communication and subsequently at campuses of the City University of New York. He is a graduate of the Cinema Studies Dept at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He has published scholarly and journalistic articles on the new Indian cinema as well as on the popular cinema. He has also worked in film and TV production and is currently developing a feature film project.

 
Muriel PetersMuriel (Mike) Peters film and television productions and credits include: LISTENING TO VOLCANOES, a Documentary shot in Indonesia for PBS and BBC, with Madhur Jaffrey as presenter; INNER SPACE TO OUTER SPACE, a trilogy of films on Indonesia; ASIA STAGE CENTER, a television series bringing together Asian and Western performing artists; THE REVENGE OF TWO SONS, a video on the Court Dance of Okinawa; MANIFESTATIONS OF SHIVA, a Documentary feature for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Asia Society and PBS; WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WHEN YOU GROW OLD? With DCA Productions; THE EYE OF THE STORM, a Documentary for ABC News, winner of a Peabody and many other awards; THE DAY BEFORE TOMORROW, for Newsweek Magazine; THE GURU, a Merchant Ivory feature shot in India for 20th Century Fox, starring Michael York and Utpal Dutt; and AFRICA, a four-hour Documentary for ABC. She is currently one of the producers of the Documentary film, A WAY HOME, about the U.S.-Manipur baseball project; and is developing THE DIPLOMAT’S WIFE, a feature set in India in 1963.
Ms. Peters was Director of the Film and Broadcasting Department of the Asia Society in New York from 1977-82, during which time she was Director of FILM INDIA (a major retrospective of films from India, jointly with MOMA), of FILMS FROM KOREA and of CINEMA INDONESIA. She was also Executive in charge of Film and Broadcasting for the Indo-US Subcommission on Education and Culture from 1976-83.
She is a longtime member of New York Women in Film, served as a Board Director and continues to serve on the Advisory Board. She was for some years the Chairman of the Board of Women in Film and Television International. She is a member of IFP.
Ms. Peters received a B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University, and a B. Litt in Oriental Art from Oxford University. Her dissertation was on the Elephanta caves of India, where she also lived for many years. She continues to maintain close ties with India. She has traveled widely in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Caribbean, North America.
 
Joseph MathewJoseph Mathew is an award-winning filmmaker based in New York City. His documentary Crossing Arizona premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 and has been widely distributed around the world. His first narrative film, Bombay Summer won three awards including Best Director and Best Film at the MIAAC film festival 2009.
 
Mirra BankMirra Bank is an award winning Director/Producer/Cinematographer. Her recent feature documentary, The Only Real Game - ‘hits a grand slam!’ (Los Angeles Times) ‘clear eyed and surprising!’ (Variety) - is a human rights/baseball story set in strife-torn Manipur, in northeast India. The Only Real Game screened widely in festivals and theaters; it won Best Documentary at the NY Indian Film Festival and Directors' Choice Award at the Sedona International Film Festival, among other awards. Narrated by Academy Award winner, Melissa Leo, the film is now out on Netflix. Bank's Last Dance followed a fang and claw collaboration between Pilobolus Dance Theatre and legendary author/illustrator, Maurice Sendak as they created a holocaust-themed work together - ‘choreographic magic...thrills!’ (New York Times), ‘haunting, rigorous’ (New Yorker), ‘great art has to draw blood’ (Los Angeles Times). Last Dance received numerous honors/awards, and was short-listed for an Academy Award. Bank's Enormous Changes at the Last Minute premiered at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals, then went on to a critically praised theatrical and international television release. Bank is currently in post production on No Fear No Favor, a feature documentary about innovative anti-poaching and community empowerment programs in the vast Kafue wilderness in sub-Saharan Africa. Bank serves on the Board of Directors of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures; she was President of New York Women in Film and Television and currently serves on the Advisory Board. She is a MacDowell Fellow and a Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio.
  
Yoshita SinghYoshita Singh is a senior journalist with over 14 years' experience of reporting from the US and India on foreign relations, international trade, global policy, business and culture. She is currently Senior United Nations and New York Correspondent for Press Trust of India (PTI), India's largest newswire headquartered in New Delhi. Yoshita has previously worked in New Delhi, Chicago and Boston.

Last year, Yoshita's debut book 'Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari: Satire in Indian Literature' was published. The book is a critical analysis on the evolution of satire in Indian Literature, with eminent Indian author Shrilal Shukla’s masterpiece and award-winning ‘Raag Darbari’ as the central focus.

As PTI's only correspondent in the New York area for the last seven years, Yoshita has reported on a broad spectrum of subjects - the annual high-level UN General Assembly sessions, India-US relations, the US Presidential elections, Indian diaspora, visits by Indian Heads of Government and Cabinet Ministers as well as a wide array of economic, cultural and entertainment issues. Her accurate and unbiased reports have appeared in leading Indian newspapers and magazines and cited by scores of TV channels.

Before being posted in New York, Yoshita was based in Chicago and Boston. From Chicago, she provided extensive coverage of the terrorism case of 26/11 Mumbai attacks accused David Headley and while in Boston, she did a digital media course at Harvard University.

Yoshita worked for two years in PTI's headquarters in New Delhi from 2006-2008, covering India's Ministry of Commerce and reporting on international trade and industry and bilateral relations with India's key trading partners. She has travelled to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, South Africa on reporting assignments and had also covered the 2008 World Trade Organization Mini-Ministerial meeting in Geneva. During her tenure in PTI New Delhi, she received a record five in-house awards for best coverage selected by PTI's top editors.

Before joining PTI, Yoshita was a features writer for The Lucknow Times, a supplement of India's largest English language daily The Times of India, from 2003-2005.

Yoshita has a Master's Degree in English Literature from the University of Lucknow in India and a Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism through distance education from the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communications, Pune India.
  
Myrna Moncayo-Iyengar Myrna Moncayo-Iyengar is a film producer based in San Francisco. Before moving to California in 2014, Myrna spent the previous five years as Director of Corporate Strategy for Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival. Prior to Tribeca, Myrna led the casting process for Ramin Bahrani's sophomore film "Chop Shop", which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards and one Gotham Award, including Breakthrough Actor. She also helped coordinate Oscar-campaign events for Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth while at Alfonso Cuaron's Esperanto Filmoj, and managed film acquisitions for Emerging Pictures. Prior to being bitten by the film bug in 2005, she held various management positions for 10+ years at Fortune-500 companies including Citibank, Deloitte & Touche, and KPMG.
  

Udayan GuptaUdayan Gupta is the co-founder of Books Beyond Boundaries, a collaborative publishing company, and a consultant to small entrepreneurial businesses and asset managers.
He is a former senior special writer at The Wall Street Journal, is the author of several books, including Done Deals, The First Venture Capitalist and Mind Into Matter.  Mr. Gupta’s writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times as well as Advertising Age, Alpha, American Film, Barron’s, Black Enterprise, Chronicle of Higher Education, Cineaste, Electronic Media, Fortune, Hispanic Business, Information Week, Institutional Investor, Jump Cut, Madison Avenue, Red Herring, and Seven Days. He is also a publisher and producer of interactive multi-media projects.

 

Tejaswini GantiTejaswini Ganti is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty in the Program in Culture & Media at New York University. A cultural and visual anthropologist specializing in South Asia, her research and teaching interests include anthropology of media, Indian cinema, media industries, production cultures, visual culture, and globalization. She has been conducting ethnographic research about the social world and filmmaking practices of the Hindi film industry since 1996 and is the author of Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke University Press 2012) and Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004; 2nd edition 2013). Her current research examines the politics of language and translation within the Bombay film industry; the formalization and professionalization of film training through film schools in India and a social history of Indian cinema in the U.S.

 

Claus MuellerClaus Mueller pursued undergraduate and graduate studies in Germany, France, and the United States and teaches media research at CUNY. He has authored books and articles, focusing most recently integration and film tourism issues, as well as producing DOCUMENTARIES and presented related papers in New Delhi, Busan and other venues. As a recipient of numerous awards, including Fulbrights, he has arranged seminars and Congressional briefings and carried out research overseas with the next project scheduled for Cambodia. Apart from curating at specialized film festivals he has served as a judge for film festivals and for the national and international Emmys. He is the New York Correspondent for the Paris based M21Editions, but also writes for other electronic and print publications. He has been serving on the board of non-profit media organizations such as the International Film Exchange and the New York Film and Video Council and has been elected to the American Council on Germany and the International Council of the National Television Academy. He is listed in Marquis’ Who’s Who in America.

  
Mrinal Desai Mrinal Desai initially trained as an engineer and worked in the oilfields of Egypt, UAE and Kuwait. The search for something more soul satisfying led him to study Motion Picture Photography at the Film & Television Institute of India. He now works on a variety of projects across the globe - doing feature films, TV commercials and documentaries on practically every cinematic medium. Mrinal’s last feature film, ‘Court’ was an astounding critical success winning 19 awards internationally including 2 Lions at the 2014 Venice International Film Festival and Golden Lotus for Best Film at the 2015 National Awards. He was second unit Cinematographer on Danny Boyle's 2009 multi Oscar winning 'Slumdog Millionaire'. His documentary credits include the Primetime Emmy nominated, Tribeca and HotDocs winner for 2012, ‘The World Before Her’ directed by Nisha Pahuja, the BAFTA winner (2010) & Emmy nominated, 'Terror in Mumbai' & 'The Battle for Haiti' (BAFTA winner 2011) both directed by Dan Reed. Other films with Reed include ‘Terror at the Mall’ (BAFTA nomination 2015), 'The Ground Zero Mosque' (Channel 4/PBS) and 'Children of the Tsunami' (BBC/SWR). Mrinal is based in New York and Mumbai.
   
Arshad Khan Arshad Khan is a director, writer, producer, production designer, film curator and film educator with several short and long form film credits in fiction and documentary. He has worked on Deepa Mehta's film Midnights Children (2012), designed productions such as the Canadian-Punjabi feature SARDARJI (2015) and the short CASE CLAUS'D (2015) and directed VALERY'S SUITCASE (2016). Khan is the director of award-winning documentaries such as ZEN (2012) and THREADBARE (2008). Khan is currently developing a fiction feature. ABU (2017) a film about a gay son's struggle with his devout, Muslim father is his first feature documentary. Khan is the director of Canada's premier South Asian film festival Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival (MISAFF).
 
Sri Rao Sri Rao is a screenwriter, author, and filmmaker in New York City. He wrote the film, "Baar Baar Dekho," produced by Karan Johar and Farhan Akhtar, starring Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif. The romantic drama featured 2016’s #1 dance hit, “Kala Chashma” (with over 200 million views on YouTube). Previously, Sri produced Kabir Khan's "New York," starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, and Irrfan Khan; and "Badmaash Company," starring Shahid Kapoor and Anushka Sharma, both for Yash Raj Films. Sri's book, Bollywood Kitchen, will be released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt later this year. In this 320-page, gorgeously photographed book, Sri combines two of his passions -- food and films -- introducing readers to the most iconic, contemporary Bollywood movies and pairing a menu of home-cooked recipes with each film. Sri is an established TV writer, having ?created and sold pilots to major networks ?like ABC, NBC, Fox, The CW, Bravo, BBC America, and Nickelodeon. His projects, spanning both drama and comedy, often tell stories of the Indian-American experience. ?Some of his credits include: “Courtesan” with director Shekhar Kapur, “S.O.B.” with Kelly Ripa, “Bollywood Spy” with Ryan Seacrest, and “I Am Not Myself These Days” with Darren Star.

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