Poorna Jagannathan is an actor who splits her time between New York and Mumbai. She was last seen in Aamir Khan's "Delhy Belly" for which she received an L'Oreal Femina Award for Breakthrough Performance and the Stardust Award for Best Supporting Actor. Her upcoming films are Bruce Beresford's "Peace, Love and Misunderstanding," and Stuart Blumberg's "Thanks for Sharing." She has also worked with acclaimed filmmakers like Spike Lee, Gore Verbinski and Joby Harold. On television, she has a recurring role on "Royal Pains" and has appeared on shows like "Law and Order" and "Rescue Me." She has been a proud member of the NYIFF jury for years and a staunch supporter since its inception.

Myrna Moncayo-Iyengar currently works as Director of Corporate Strategy for Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival, Tribeca Film and Tribeca Flashpoint.

Prior to Tribeca, Myrna led the casting process for Ramin Bahrani's film Chop Shop, which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards and one Gotham Award, including Breakthrough Actor. She also helped coordinate Oscar-campaign events for "Children of Men" and "Pan's Labyrinth" while at Alfonso Cuarón's Esperanto Filmoj, and managed film acquisitions for Emerging Pictures.

Prior to being bitten by the film bug in 2005, she worked in various management positions for 10 years in various firms including Citibank, Deloitte & Touche and KPMG.

Muriel (Mike) Peters film and television productions and credits include: LISTENING TO VOLCANOES, a Documentary shot in Indonesia for PBS and BBC, with Madhur Jaffrey as presenter; INNER SPACE TO OUTER SPACE, a trilogy of films on Indonesia; ASIA STAGE CENTER, a television series bringing together Asian and Western performing artists; THE REVENGE OF TWO SONS, a video on the Court Dance of Okinawa; MANIFESTATIONS OF SHIVA, a Documentary feature for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Asia Society and PBS; WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WHEN YOU GROW OLD? With DCA Productions; THE EYE OF THE STORM, a Documentary for ABC News, winner of a Peabody and many other awards; THE DAY BEFORE TOMORROW, for Newsweek Magazine; THE GURU, a Merchant Ivory feature shot in India for 20th Century Fox, starring Michael York and Utpal Dutt; and AFRICA, a four-hour Documentary for ABC. She is currently one of the producers of the Documentary film, A WAY HOME, about the U.S.-Manipur baseball project; and is developing THE DIPLOMAT’S WIFE, a feature set in India in 1963.

Ms. Peters was Director of the Film and Broadcasting Department of the Asia Society in New York from 1977-82, during which time she was Director of FILM INDIA (a major retrospective of films from India, jointly with MOMA), of FILMS FROM KOREA and of CINEMA INDONESIA. She was also Executive in charge of Film and Broadcasting for the Indo-US Subcommission on Education and Culture from 1976-83.

She is a longtime member of New York Women in Film, served as a Board Director and continues to serve on the Advisory Board. She was for some years the Chairman of the Board of Women in Film and Television International. She is a member of IFP.

Ms. Peters received a B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University, and a B. Litt in Oriental Art from Oxford University. Her dissertation was on the Elephanta caves of India, where she also lived for many years. She continues to maintain close ties with India. She has traveled widely in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Caribbean, North America.

Sabrina Dhawan was born in England, raised in Delhi and lives in New York. She graduated from Columbia University’s film program in 2001 with a Masters of Fine Arts in Film. Sabrina’s student short Saanjh – As Night Falls was cited as ‘Best of the Festival’ at the Palm Springs Film Festival in 2000; won an award from New Line Cinema for ‘Most Original Film’, the ‘Audience Impact’ Award at Angelus Awards and was nominated for a Student Academy Award.

Sabrina’s first produced screenplay Monsoon Wedding, directed by Oscar-nominated director Mira Nair was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2002 and was also nominated for a Golden Globe for ‘Best Film in a Foreign Language’.

Sabrina’s produced credits include 11.9.01, a short film on September 11th for Canal Plus; Cosmopolitan for PBS. She has co-screenplay credit on Kaminey (directed by Vishal Bharadwaj) and Ishiqiya (directed by Abhishek Chaubey). She served as co-producer on Bollywood Hero, a mini-series for IFC. Sabrina just completed writing a DOCUMENTARIES to celebrate 100 years of Bollywood which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. She has written for various studios and film companies in the US and India, including 20th century Fox, HBO, Disney Animation, Fox-Star and Killer Films.

Sabrina has taught at Columbia University’s MFA program, MAISHA (a lab based in Uganda for East African film-makers), Asian American Writing Workshop, Doha Film Institute in Qatar, the Hamptons Film Festival, India Screenwriting Lab etc. She is an Assistant Professor and the Area Head of Screenwriting at the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Sabrina is currently working on a Broadway musical adaptation of the movie Monsoon Wedding and on a feature film for ABC.

Kavery Kaul is the director and producer of critically-acclaimed documentaries like Back Walking Forward, Long Way from Home and One Hand Don’t Clap. Her work has been shown in theaters and on television, in the US and internationally. It has been exhibited at festivals such as Telluride, London, Berlin, Sydney, in countries like India, Japan, Burkina Faso and Martinique. Kavery is currently developing the documentary Streetcar to Kolkata. She also teaches filmmaking at City College of New York.

Parag Amladi is a film scholar and educator and has taught film studies and film production first in Bombay at the Xavier Institute of Communication and subsequently at campuses of the City University of New York. He is a graduate of the Cinema Studies Dept at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He has published scholarly and journalistic articles on the new Indian cinema as well as on the popular cinema. He has also worked in film and TV production and is currently developing a feature film project.

Jerry Carlson , A specialist in narrative theory, global independent film, and the cinemas of the Americas, Professor Carlson is Acting Chair of the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College CUNY. In addition, at the CUNY Graduate Center he is a member of the doctoral faculties of French, Film Studies and Comparative Literature and a Senior Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies. He has lectured at Stanford, Columbia, Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Cuba), the University of Paris, and the University of Sao Paulo, among others. His current research is focused on how slavery and its legacy in the New World have been represented in film, literature, and music.

Moreover, he is an active producer, director, and writer with multiple Emmy Awards. As a Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created and produces the series CITY CINEMATHEQUE about film history, CANAPE about French-American cultural relations, and NUEVA YORK (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City. As an independent producer, his recent work includes the Showtime Networks production DIRT directed by Nancy Savoca and LOOKING FOR PALLADIN directed by Andrzej Krakowski.

In 1998 he was inducted by France as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes. He was educated at Williams College (B.A.) and the University of Chicago (A.M. & Ph.D.).

Claus Mueller pursued undergraduate and graduate studies in Germany, France, and the United States and teaches media research at CUNY. He has authored books and articles, focusing most recently integration and film tourism issues, as well as producing DOCUMENTARIES and presented related papers in New Delhi, Busan and other venues. As a recipient of numerous awards, including Fulbrights, he has arranged seminars and Congressional briefings and carried out research overseas with the next project scheduled for Cambodia. Apart from curating at specialized film festivals he has served as a judge for film festivals and for the national and international Emmys. He is the New York Correspondent for the Paris based M21Editions, but also writes for other electronic and print publications. He has been serving on the board of non profit media organizations such as the International Film Exchange and the New York Film and Video Council and has been elected to the American Council on Germany and the International Council of the National Television Academy. He is listed in Marquis’ Who’s Who in America.

Nilita Vachani was born in New Delhi and now lives in New York. She is an internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and writer. Her film Eyes of Stone won the Golden Conch at BIFF (1992) and the Rajat Kamal for the Best Film on Social Issues the same year; the Prix Alcan du Jury at the Montreal International Festival of Films by Women (1990), the Uppsala FilmKaja at the Uppsala International Film Festival (1991), the Basil Wright Prize at the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, Manchester (1992), special mention Prix des Bibliotheque, Cinema du Reel (1990) and a nomination for the Documentary award at Hawaii, 1992. Her film Diamonds in a Vegetable Market won BBC the best Feature Documentary award from the Asian Film Academy in 1994. ‘When Mother Comes Home for Christmas won the Best Film at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence (1996) and Best Documentary at the International Women’s film festival in Torino (1997). Her films have been in the official selections at Berlin, Rotterdam, London, New York, Toronto, San Francisco, HongKong, Yamagata, amongst a host of others, and have been broadcast on BBC, La Sept, Arte, ORF, SBS, ZDF. ERT, RAI and Doordarshan. Apart from being extensively reviewed in the media, her work has been written about in Global Woman (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2003), Left in the Dark (Stuart Klawans, 2002) and Moving People Moving Images (Brown et al,2010).
Nilita has worked as an Editor on several documentary features and as Assistant Director on Mira Nair’s ‘Salaam Bombay’ and Script Supervisor on ‘Mississippi Masala’.
Her debut novel HomeSpun won Foreword’s Choice Fiction Award in 2008. Nilita has recently adapted Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide for the screen. Her first screenplay The Banyan won the French government’s CNC-Fonds-Sud prize for an emerging filmmaker from the south.
She is Associate faculty at Tisch School for the Arts, New York University.

Zenobia Shroff has been an actress in NYC for the past 20 years. She has been in numerous theatrical productions, performing at such venues as THE FAMED LA MAMA E.T.C., Some of you may know her from Sooni Taraporeval as Little Zizou which premiered at the 2008 NYIFF Film Festival. She has written a one woman piece Exotic Observations which she performed for the IAAC at the Guild Gallery past August. She writes for theajnabee.com and on her own website zenobiashroff.biz. The midtown international theatre festival and the new york comedy club. She has been in plays by mario fratti, writer of "nine" , milan kundera and bina sharif. a few years ago she made the switch to film, starting with the mira nair presented "little zizou" which premiered at the 2008 indo american arts council film festival. Zenobia received a best actress nomination for that role at the festival,as well as rave reviews. (see below) She was next seen in an independent ‘’ when harry tries to marry’’ which had it’s world premiere in nyc. the film is now on on netflix, itunes and amazon. she has written a one woman piece "exotic observations" which she performed in and around new york. Clips can be seen on you tube.com/zrshroff . She writes for theajnabee.com and on her own website zenobiashroff.biz. She is an accomplished bharat natyam dancer and holds a masters degree in pyschology. She has taught drama and movement through out the nyc metro area to underpriveleged and inner city kids.

Zenobia's new film, her first bollywood venture called 'ek main aur ekk tu' produced by karan johar and starring kareena kapoor and imran khan premiered last month to rave reviews and stellar box office.

"but the scene stealer of the film is zenobia shroff. With her husband, with zizou, with her mother- she is spectacular" - mumbai mid-day
"'zenobia shroff is outstanding as the mother" - rediff.com

Joseph Mathew is an award-winning filmmaker based in New York City. His documentary Crossing Arizona premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 and has been widely distributed around the world. His first narrative film, Bombay Summer won three awards including Best Director and Best Film at the MIAAC film festival 2009.

Tejaswini Ganti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and its Program in Culture & Media at New York University.  A visual anthropologist specializing in South Asia, her research interests include Indian cinema, anthropology of media, production cultures, visual culture, cultural policy, nationalism, neoliberalism, capitalism, ideologies of development and theories of globalization.  She has been conducting ethnographic research about the social world and filmmaking practices of the Hindi film industry since 1996 and is the author of Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004; 2nd edition forthcoming) Her most recent book Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke 2012), examines the social and institutional transformations of the Hindi film industry from 1994-2010.  She has also written about the politics of commemorative rituals around cinema in Bombay, Hindi filmmakers’ practices of remaking Hollywood films, and the Hindi film industry’s complex relationship to censorship.  Additionally, she has produced the documentary, Gimme Somethin’ to Dance to! (1995) which explores the significance of bhangra music for South Asians in the U.S.

Education: BA 1991, Northwestern University; MA 1994, University of Pennsylvania; PhD 2000, New York University.