| For immediate release |
| MAHINDRA INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL (MIAAC) FILM FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 11-15, 2009 |
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MIAAC AND NEW YORK UNIVERSITY November 11-15 in New York City October 22, 2009, New York, NY: The MIAAC (Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council) Film Festival announces MIAAC @ NYU, a new series of critical discourse on Indian cinema organized in partnership with New York University's Department of Cinema Studies. The series is part of MIAAC09, New York City’s Indian Film Festival, which runs from November 11-15, 2009. Now in its ninth year, the festival will have 47 screenings including 44 premieres of features, documentaries and shorts. Regular public screenings will be at the Quad Cinema, with special screenings at the Paris Theatre, Walter Reade Theater, the National Museum of the American Indian, and NYU's Cantor Center. A complete program and ticket information is online at www.miaacfilmfest.org. MIAAC @ NYU will be comprised of five panel discussions and two NYU Directors’ Series screenings organized in association with the Department of Film and Television. "I am delighted to join with MIAAC on curating this series of panels on Indian and Indian Diasporic Cinema. Indian cinema makes a pivotal contribution to world film culture that, in spite of Slumdog, is insufficiently recognized by established film festivals, and I hope that this collaboration with the MIAAC film festival marks the beginning of a long-term partnership that will foster a vital, intellectually engaged Indian film culture here in New York City,” says Richard Allen, Professor and Chair of Cinema Studies at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. - KASHMIR ON FILM will take a look at the way media makers from feature film directors to documentary filmmakers to online media makers have turned their lens on the 10-year old conflict. REFRAMING INDIAN CINEMA featuring veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, director Anurag Kashyap, and many more. This panel will focus on addressing the competing terms and terminologies emerging from a rapidly evolving Indian cinema. QUEER BOLLYWOOD, QUEER PRESENCE, and ACTIVISM ON THE INDEPENDENT SCREEN. Panel chairs and discussants will include Prof. Allen, Gayatri Gopinath and Sabrina Dhawan from NYU, and Princeton University’s Dayton-Stockton Professor of History Gyan Prakash. These two separate panels will look into the past and the present - How have representations of queerness in Indian cinema changed over the past decade? How are media artists and activists representing queer culture and issues during changing times in India as reflected by the recent judgment of the Delhi High Court decriminalizing gay sex? Prof. Karl Bardosh’s first Cell Phone Cinema class will make 1 minute long videos and take still photographs of their festival experience. Called "My MIAAC" these student works will be shown on Sunday, November 15 at 12:00 PM at the Quad Cinema. The two winners of this student competition will receive an award at the Closing Gala of the festival in Lincoln Center where students will attend the festival and make a one-minute film called "My MIAAC". The key focus of the panels is to initiate a lively discussion around Indian film as well as touching upon sensitive subjects such as the conflict in Kashmir, and Queer presence in Indian cinema. The series will bring together eminent filmmakers, scholars and practitioners of Indian film to illuminate aspects of the MIAAC Film Festival’s program. The two special NYU Directors’ Series screenings of films include Shyam Benegal's “Well-Done Abba” on Thursday, November 12 at 6pm and Anurag Kashyap's “Gulaal” on Friday, November 13 at 6pm. Both will be held at the NYU’s Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8th Street. Admission to the screenings is restricted to NYU students and IAAC invitees. About the Indo-American Arts Council: The is a registered 501(c)3 not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America. The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. We work cooperatively with colleagues around the United States to broaden our collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources and funding. Our focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India to exhibit, perform and produce their works here. For more information, please visit About the Mahindra Group The US $6.3 billion Mahindra Group is among the top 10 industrial houses in India. Mahindra is the market leader in multi-utility vehicles in India. It made a milestone entry into the passenger car segment with the Logan. Mahindra & Mahindra is the only Indian company among the top tractor brands in the world. The Group has a leading presence in key sectors of the Indian economy, including the financial services, trade, retail and logistics, automotive components, after-market, information technology and infrastructure development. Mahindra has made an entry in the two-wheeler segment which will see the company emerge as a full-range player with a presence in almost every segment of the automobile industry. The Mahindra Group recently expanded its IT portfolio when Tech Mahindra acquired the leading global business and information technology services company, Satyam Computer Services. The company is now known as Mahindra Satyam. Mahindra's Farm Equipment Sector is the proud recipient of the Japan Quality Medal, the only tractor company worldwide to be bestowed this honour. It also holds the distinction of being the only tractor company worldwide to win the Deming Prize. The US based Reputation Institute recently ranked Mahindra among the top 10 Indian companies in its Global 200: The World's Best Corporate Reputations list. Mahindra is also one of the few Indian companies to receive an A+ GRI checked rating for its first Sustainability Report for the year 2007-08. Press Contacts: Peepul PR |