16th Annual NEW YORK INDIAN FILM FESTIVAL May 7 - 14, 2016
REVIEWS
examiner.com 16th New York Indian Film Fest starts Saturday
The 16th New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) is set to open Saturday night (May 7) at Skirball Center for Performing Arts with its opening night gala entry Let’s Dance to the Rhythm, also the New York premiere of the 2014 Bardroy Baretto-directed film starring Vijay Maurya, Palomi Ghosh and Prince Jacob.
Other key screenings include the festival centerpiece showing—and U.S. premiere—of Highway (2015), directed by Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni and starring Mukta Barve, Sunil Barve and Tisca Chopra, at Village East Cinemas on May 10. The closing night film, at the Skirball on May 14, is the New York premiere of Aligarh (2015), directed by Hansal Mehta and starring Manoj Bajpai and Rajkummar Rao.
Altogether, NYIFF will feature 40 screenings--35 narrative films and five documentaries–all new to New York theater audiences. The festival will also feature five programs of short films. All films are subtitled in English from South Asian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telegu, Assamese, Haryanavi and Urdu.
The festival celebrates independent, art house, alternate, and diaspora films from, about or connected to the Indian subcontinent, with standouts in the schedule also including the 2016 National Award winners A Far Afternoon, Birds with Large Wings and The River of Fables. Teen comedy Brahman Naman just played Sundance, while Parched, about women’s lives in Gujarat, has won multiple awards.
Tamil film Crime in Punishment is the latest film from last year’s NYIFF award winner M. Manikandan, and For the Love of a Man is a documentary on Tamil superstar Rajinikanth. Kagaz Ki Kashti is a biopic about ghazal singing great Jagjit Singh and is a world premiere.
Also inclused in this year’s festival are National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) restorations of first films by notable filmmakers, and a showing of films by the late Hindi cinema director Bimal Roy, director Basu Bhattacharya (Roy’s former son-in-law) and actor/screenplay writer Aditya Bhattacharya, son of Basu.
“We are thrilled to be able to share these films with the New York audience,” says NYIFF festival director Aseem Chhabra. “Three of the feature films are National Award winners. And out of the nearly 40 shorts we are showing this year, there are two National Award winners: Famous in Ahmedabad and Daarvatha.”
The NYIFF festival is the main event each year of the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC), the New York-based non-profit resource arts organization that promotes Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America.
“The 2016 festival features a wide array of films from all over the South Asian diaspora,” says IAAC founder Aroon Shivdasani. “This year our films reflect the reality of India, dealing both with LGBT issues that have surfaced in the supreme court and on the streets, as well as strong feminist films dealing with female infanticide, child marriage, domestic abuse, trafficking and several other key issues that affect women in a world that still leans towards chauvinism.”
Festival passes and individual tickets can be purchased at the festival's website.
