“Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Namesake,” and a host of other blockbuster India-oriented films had their premieres at a New York festival with a forbidding name — the Mahindra Ido-American Arts Council Film Festival or MIAAC. Starting on Wednesday, November 11th, New Yorkers will have a chance at the ninth annual Indian film festival , MIAAC 2009, to meet the director Mira Nair and watch many of her films, including the now-classic Salaam Bombay, and to see future international hits and meet current international stars, including the ageless beauty, Sharmila Tagore

There is a special tribute to Prakash Mehra, the legendary Bollywood filmmaker who died earlier this year, a multimedia presentation on “Queer Bollywood”, and a look at films on the volatile Kashmir region. There are also film industry panels, with titles like “Success Stories and Changing Formulas: Producing and Marketing in the International Market.” There is even a “cell phone cinema” competition.

But there are mostly dozens of films.This includes five Bengali features and a full length documentary. Opening night at the Paris Theater is a gala and screening of “Today’s Special” described as a food comedy set in New York City, in which a chef at a hot Manhattan restaurant is forced to take over his family’s failing restaurant in Jackson Heights. It stars Aasif Mandvi, best-known in the United States as a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Closing night at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center is The Endless Wait (Antaheen), which brings Bollywood legends Aparna Sen and Sharmila Tagore (both director Satyajit Ray discoveries) on screen together for the first time, about a pair of virtual (online) lovers.

In-between, the so-called Festival Centerpiece, is a screening at the Museum of Arts and Design of Tahaan, a fable about an eight-year-old boy who goes on a journey through some spectacular terrain in the Kashmir valley to bring back his pet donkey.

For the complete schedule click here