New York Indian Film Festival 2019


19th Annual NEW YORK INDIAN FILM FESTIVAL
May 7-12, 2019


REVIEWS
 
bollyspice.com
New York Indian Film Festival To Feature the New York premiere of Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded By The Light
25 April 2019

The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) announced the full lineup at the Launch event for their 19th year of celebrating Independent, art house, alternate, and diaspora films from the Indian subcontinent (May 7– May 12) at the Village East Cinemas in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (181-189 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10003). Dedicated to bringing these films to a New York audience, the festival will feature 32 screenings (29 narrative, 3 documentary and 32 short films). NYIFF will be featuring 7 World Premieres along with an International Premiere and 5 US premieres and the rest of the films being NY premieres. NYIFF has been the go-to festival to see South Asian diaspora films that have not been seen in New York City and is continuing with this mission for the nineteenth year.

This year NYIFF has the largest number of regional (non-Hindi) language films – 20 in total. The languages focused on are Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Ladakhi, Punjabi, and Harayanavi and all the films will have English subtitles.

NYIFF Festival Director Aseem Chhabra said, “We are thrilled to share our lineup for this year. The NYIFF programming team has spent a number of months watching, tracking films and we now present to the audience the best of Indian cinema.”

Returning to NYIFF is award-winning filmmaker, Gurinder Chadha with her new film. The festival will be hosting a Special Spotlight of Chadha’s Blinded by the Light, which will be making its New York debut after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is inspired by the true story of journalist Sarfraz Manzoor and his lifelong love of Bruce Springsteen.

Bengali Master Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Urojahaj (The Flight) will be a part of the special focus on Bengali cinema that NYIFF will be presenting this year. Seven features will be a part of this presentation, many by first time filmmakers, putting a spotlight on a resurgence of films from West Bengal.

Arijit Singh, a widely popular Bollywood singer will be highlighted at the festival with his second directorial venture Sa– a tribute to Satyajit Ray and Ravi Shankar. Anoushka Shankar plays sitar for the film.

Other highlights of the festival include Assamese filmmaker, Rima Das whose last film Village Rockstars was India’s official entry for the 2019 Oscars. Rima’s new film Bulbul Can Sing will have its NY premiere at NYIFF along with Assamese master and National Film Award Winner Jahnu Barua’s World premiere of his new film Bhoga Khirikee (Broken Window).

Short Filmmakers Ashuman Sharma (Jalebi) and Vick Krishna (Mokshi) were in attendance at the NYIFF Launch event on Thursday, April 18 at the Consulate General of India, New York. They are a part of NYIFF’s four short programs that includes a total of 32 short films.

Also announced at the NYIFF Launch, Celebrity Chef and filmmaker Vikas Khanna was named the Brand Ambassador of the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC). Khanna is a Michelin-star chef as well as a cookbook author, humanitarian, filmmaker and was once voted New York City’s hottest chef. Khanna’s The Last Color starring Neena Guptawill be the prestigious Closing Night film for the festival and will be honoring mothers around the world on Mother’s Day.

Said Sunil Hali, Executive Director and President, IAAC,”We have received tremendous support from Ambassador Sandeep Chakravorty and Consulate General India, New York. Corporate sponsors such as AIR INDIA, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank amongst others have come forward with significant contributions. The PIERRE from Taj Group continues to expand the relationship with IAAC. Local regional and community associations such as “Sadhu Vaswani Centers” continue to help in supporting our expanded mandate to promote regional films. Film schools have joined hands and now the leading broadcaster, IndiaCast with Viacom18 has confirmed as our exclusive broadcast partner for NYIFF2019 in USA in “powered by” category. A special 30-minute curtain raiser and a 90-minute special on NYIFF2019 will be produced by IndiaCast and aired on “Aapka Colors” and “Colors Rishtey”. We look forward to building such relationship to make NYIFF2019 a great success”.

TICKET INFO:
Regular tickets $20, Student (w/ID) $10
Opening Night and Closing Night tickets $35
Day Passes are also available
More info here: https://www.iaac.us/nyiff2019/schedule.htm

Film Name Language Director
Bhonsle Hindi Devashish Makhija NY premiere
Yours Truly Hindi Sanjoy Nag NY premiere
Sir (Opening Night film) Hindi Rohena Gera NY premiere
Photograph (Centerpiece film) Hindi Ritesh Batra NY premiere
The Last Color (Closing Night film) Hindi Vikas Khanna NY premiere
Sidhustan (doc) English Sapna Bhawnani World premiere
The Sound Man: Mangesh Desai English/ Hindi Subash Sahoo NY premiere
Midnight Delhi Hindi Rakesh Rawat US premiere
Hamid Hindi Aijaz Khan NY premiere
Bulbul Can Sing Assamese Rima Das NY premiere
Aamis Assamese Bhaskar Hazarika
Bhoga Khirikee Assamese Jahnu Barua World premiere
Chegu Bengali Nabamita Ghosh US premiere
The Flight Bengali Buddhadev Dasgupta US premiere
The Bose Family Bengali Suman Ghosh International premiere
Chippa Bengali Syed Safdar Rahman NY premiere
Kia and Cosmos Bengali Sudipto Roy NY premiere
Sa Bengali Arijit Singh International premiere
Cat Sticks Bengali/ Hindi Ronny Sen NY premiere
Baggage Kannada Roopa Rao World premiere
Good Guy, Bad Guy (doc) Kannada, English Indu Krishnan NY premiere
Chuskit Ladakhi Priya Ramasubban NY premiere
Abode Malayalam Jaya Jose Raj World premiere
Paani Marathi Adinath Kothare World premiere
Roots Tamil Anand Ravichandaran World premiere
Kattumaram Tamil Swarnavel Eswaran World premiere
Shivaranjani and Two Other Women Tamil Vasanth Sai NY premiere
K.D. (a) Karuppa Durai Tamil Madhumita Sundararaman US premiere
Draupadi Unleashed English Tony Stopperan NY premiere
Salute Punjabi Harish Arora NY premiere
 
URL: https://bollyspice.com/new-york-indian-film-festival-to-feature-the-new-york-premiere-of-gurinder-chadhas-blinded-by-the-light/



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