Shabana Azmi, Rahul Bose and Tannishtha Chatterjee at the awards ceremony

What can be better than a feast of cinema? A feast of cinema with several glittering parties and celebrities-in-the-flesh! The Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council festival of Indian films had ample doses of both, and drew an enthusiastic crowd. Over the five day festival fans got to see such celebrities as  Rahul Bose, Sharmila Tagore, Manisha Koirala, Deepti Naval, Aasif Mandvi, Shyam Benegal, Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Mira Nair and Sarita Choudhury. They got to party at trendy spots like the Metropolitan Club, Pranna and Vermilion, rub shoulders with the stars and see over 47 art house and commercial films including ‘Bombay Summer’, ‘Shortchanged’ and ‘Anthaheen’. There were also some thought-provoking panel discussions on the future of cinema.  Aroon Shivdasani, director of the Indo-American Arts Council and Somi Roy, curator of the film festival are the ones who made it all happen, with a zealous band of volunteers.

(All photos by Michael Toolan)

Mira Nair and Sarita Choudhry

At the closing night awards ceremony at the Lincoln Center, ‘Bombay Summer’ bagged three awards for best film, best director and best actress (Tannishtha Chatterjee). Aasif Mandvi won the best actor award for ‘Today’s Special’ which he also co-wrote. Deepti Naval, who turned director with her much acclaimed debut film ‘Two Paise for Sunshine, Four Annas for Rain’ won the award for best script.

Deepti Naval gets award from Javed Akhtar

The MIAAC Festival seems to be headed for bigger successes and innovation. It was announced at the closing night festival that the prestigious Film Society of Lincoln Center will be connected in a much larger way with the festival in the years to come.

On a lighter note, this year New York University student filmmakers from the Cell Phone Cinema Class were asked to capture the proceedings of the festival on their cell phone cameras to vie for the first Cell Phone film awards. The wave of the future!

Aroon Shivdasani and Somi Roy