Talented New York documentary maker Joseph Mathew-Verghese
(Crossing Arizona) recently ventured into producing and directing feature films. He continues to win acclaim for Bombay Summer, which recently won the best film award at the Mahindra IndoAmerican Arts Council Film Festival.

The independently made film, which has been shown at a number of film festivals, also won two more awards, for best direction and best actress (Tannishtha Chatterjee). It is a story of challenges a migrant faces in a big city; it is also a story of relationships and friendships in crisis.

Chatterjee plays Gita, who has a full life and a busy career, but the man she is dating, Jaidev, is a struggling and conflicted writer. Their fractured relationship is tested further when they befriend Madan, a young migrant and a struggling commercial artist.

Mathew-Varghese, who also wrote the script, says the film "tells the stories of their personal lives to create a perceptive and beguiling look at the conflicting needs of family and life in modern India."

In Crossing Arizona, he and Dan DeVivo examined the pains of illegal immigration through the struggles of would be immigrants at the ArizonaSonora border. After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, the film has received awards at festivals in more than a dozen cities including Munich.

The ninth edition of the annual MIAAC festival in New York showed 44 Indian and Diaspora films including documentaries and shorts. One of the most influential film festivals in America, the MIAAC event drew veteran and emerging artists whose films were shown, including directors Shyam Benegal, Anurag Kashyap and debutante Deepti Naval, and actors Aasif Mandvi, Shabana Azmi, and Sharmila Tagore

Mandvi won best actor for his Jackson Heights, New York-based' Today's Special over Naseeruddin Shah (Shortchanged), who also appears in Today's Special.

Lalit Vachani's The Salt Stories was named best documentary. She uses Mahatma Gandhi's historic Salt March in Gujarat as a metaphor and weighs Gandhi's impact and legacy. Vachani says she shows Gandhi's state 'has become the site of some of the most brutal communal pogroms in recent years.' The film goes beyond communal riots. It seeks to get the viewers think about 'how the idea of a selfsufficient economy has been over-ridden by the dream of a globalized economy.'

SIDEBAR

The award winners at MIAAC

* Best short film (presented by Manisha' Koirala and Rajit Kapur): Good Night, directed by Geetika Narang. The other two nominees were Medicine Man directed by Himkar Tak and It Rises From The East, directed by Sudeep Kanwal.

* Best documentary (presented by Madhur Jaffrey and Sanjay Suri): The Salt Stories, directed by Lalit Vachani. The other two nominees were Air India by Sturla Gunnarsson and Lucky Ducks by Tracey Jackson.

* Best actor (presented by Sarita Choudhury and Shyam Benegal): Aasif Mandvi for Today's Special. The other two nominees were Naseeruddin Shah (Shortchanged) and Rahul Bose (Endless Wait).

* Best actress (presented by Shabana Azmi and Rahul Bose): Tannishtha Chatterjee for Bombay Summer. The other two nominees were Sarita Choudhury (For Real) and Manisha Koirala (Two Paise for Sunshine).

* Best screenplay (presented by Javed Akhtar and Amitav Ghosh): Two Paise for Sunshine, Four Annas For Rain by Deepti Naval. The other nominees ¿were Endless Wait by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and Shortchanged by Raja Menon.

* Best director (presented by Mira Nair and Anurag Kashyap): Joseph Mathew-Varghese for Bombay Summer. The other nominees were Raja Menon (Shortchanged) and Deepti Naval (Two Paise...).

* Best film (presented by Tracey Jackson and Aasif Mandvi): Bombay Summer, directed by Joseph Mathew-Varghese; other nominees were Shortchanged and Two Paise..