NYIFF 2017- SHOOT A SHORT FILM WORKSHOP with National Award Winning filmmaker UMESH KULKARNI 5th & 6th May, Village East Cinemas, 2nd Ave & 12th Street, NYC.


Parag Amladi	Muriel (Mike) Peters	Joseph Mathew	Mirra Bank	Madhur Jaffrey

Poorna Jagannathan	Udayan Gupta	Tejaswini Ganti	Claus Mueller	Mrinal Desai

Arshad Khan	Sri Rao

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.

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.

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.

Mirra Bank is an award winning Director/Producer/Cinematographer. Her recent feature documentary, The Only Real Game - ‘hits a grand slam!’ (Los Angeles Times) ‘clear eyed and surprising!’ (Variety) - is a human rights/baseball story set in strife-torn Manipur, in northeast India. The Only Real Game screened widely in festivals and theaters; it won Best Documentary at the NY Indian Film Festival and Directors' Choice Award at the Sedona International Film Festival, among other awards. Narrated by Academy Award winner, Melissa Leo, the film is now out on Netflix. Bank's Last Dance followed a fang and claw collaboration between Pilobolus Dance Theatre and legendary author/illustrator, Maurice Sendak as they created a holocaust-themed work together - ‘choreographic magic...thrills!’ (New York Times), ‘haunting, rigorous’ (New Yorker), ‘great art has to draw blood’ (Los Angeles Times). Last Dance received numerous honors/awards, and was short-listed for an Academy Award. Bank's Enormous Changes at the Last Minute premiered at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals, then went on to a critically praised theatrical and international television release. Bank is currently in post production on No Fear No Favor, a feature documentary about innovative anti-poaching and community empowerment programs in the vast Kafue wilderness in sub-Saharan Africa. Bank serves on the Board of Directors of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures; she was President of New York Women in Film and Television and currently serves on the Advisory Board. She is a MacDowell Fellow and a Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio.

Madhur Jaffrey - Now regarded by many as the world authority on Indian food, Madhur Jaffrey is an award-winning actress with numerous major motion pictures to her credit. She is also a bestselling author of many award-winning cookbooks - six of which have won the James Beard Award, and was named to the Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America by the James Beard Foundation. She lives in New York City.

Poorna Jagannathan was last seen on The Golden Globe nominated HBO show, "The Night of". She is currently on "Gypsy", a new Netflix show airing over the summer. Poorna is also the initiator and producer of the acclaimed play, "Nirbhaya" by Yael Farber, which won the 2013 Amnesty International Award and was called by The Telegraph as the "One of the most powerful pieces of theater you'll ever see". She is best know to Indian audiences as the lead in Aamir Khan's "Delhi Belly", for which she won numerous awards for her performance. Poorna has been a proud member of the NYIFF jury since the festival's inception.

Udayan Gupta is the co-founder of Books Beyond Boundaries, a collaborative publishing company, and a consultant to small entrepreneurial businesses and asset managers.
He is a former senior special writer at The Wall Street Journal, is the author of several books, including Done Deals, The First Venture Capitalist and Mind Into Matter. Mr. Gupta’s writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times as well as Advertising Age, Alpha, American Film, Barron’s, Black Enterprise, Chronicle of Higher Education, Cineaste, Electronic Media, Fortune, Hispanic Business, Information Week, Institutional Investor, Jump Cut, Madison Avenue, Red Herring, and Seven Days. He is also a publisher and producer of interactive multi-media projects.

Tejaswini Ganti is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty in the Program in Culture & Media at New York University. A cultural and visual anthropologist specializing in South Asia, her research and teaching interests include anthropology of media, Indian cinema, media industries, production cultures, visual culture, and 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 Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke University Press 2012) and Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004; 2nd edition 2013). Her current research examines the politics of language and translation within the Bombay film industry; the formalization and professionalization of film training through film schools in India and a social history of Indian cinema in the U.S.

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.

Mrinal initially trained as an engineer and worked in the oilfields of Egypt, UAE and Kuwait. The search for something more soul satisfying led him to study Motion Picture Photography at the Film & Television Institute of India. He now works on a variety of projects across the globe - doing feature films, TV commercials and documentaries on practically every cinematic medium. Mrinal’s last feature film, ‘Court’ was an astounding critical success winning 19 awards internationally including 2 Lions at the 2014 Venice International Film Festival and Golden Lotus for Best Film at the 2015 National Awards. He was second unit Cinematographer on Danny Boyle's 2009 multi Oscar winning 'Slumdog Millionaire'. His documentary credits include the Primetime Emmy nominated, Tribeca and HotDocs winner for 2012, ‘The World Before Her’ directed by Nisha Pahuja, the BAFTA winner (2010) & Emmy nominated, 'Terror in Mumbai' & 'The Battle for Haiti' (BAFTA winner 2011) both directed by Dan Reed. Other films with Reed include ‘Terror at the Mall’ (BAFTA nomination 2015), 'The Ground Zero Mosque' (Channel 4/PBS) and 'Children of the Tsunami' (BBC/SWR). Mrinal is based in New York and Mumbai.

Arshad Khan is a director, writer, producer, production designer, film curator and film educator with several short and long form film credits in fiction and documentary. He has worked on Deepa Mehta's film Midnights Children (2012), designed productions such as the Canadian-Punjabi feature SARDARJI (2015) and the short CASE CLAUS'D (2015) and directed VALERY'S SUITCASE (2016). Khan is the director of award-winning documentaries such as ZEN (2012) and THREADBARE (2008). Khan is currently developing a fiction feature. ABU (2017) a film about a gay son's struggle with his devout, Muslim father is his first feature documentary. Khan is the director of Canada's premier South Asian film festival Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival (MISAFF).

Sri Rao is a screenwriter, author, and filmmaker in New York City. He wrote the film, "Baar Baar Dekho," produced by Karan Johar and Farhan Akhtar, starring Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif. The romantic drama featured 2016’s #1 dance hit, “Kala Chashma” (with over 200 million views on YouTube). Previously, Sri produced Kabir Khan's "New York," starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, and Irrfan Khan; and "Badmaash Company," starring Shahid Kapoor and Anushka Sharma, both for Yash Raj Films. Sri's book, Bollywood Kitchen, will be released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt later this year. In this 320-page, gorgeously photographed book, Sri combines two of his passions -- food and films -- introducing readers to the most iconic, contemporary Bollywood movies and pairing a menu of home-cooked recipes with each film. Sri is an established TV writer, having ?created and sold pilots to major networks ?like ABC, NBC, Fox, The CW, Bravo, BBC America, and Nickelodeon. His projects, spanning both drama and comedy, often tell stories of the Indian-American experience. ?Some of his credits include: “Courtesan” with director Shekhar Kapur, “S.O.B.” with Kelly Ripa, “Bollywood Spy” with Ryan Seacrest, and “I Am Not Myself These Days” with Darren Star.