On any given day of the week, New York’s South Asian population has a chance to catch the latest Bollywood movie playing in a run-down theatre. But for the more discerning audience, it is relatively harder to find the good, but not-so-popular cinema from India.
  
Last week’s India Now festival at New York’s Museum of Modern Art was a unique opportunity for desi New Yorkers and other film aficionados to experience new Indian cinema. As Anjan Dutt, whose feature, The Bong Connection, closed the event, suggested—India Now was a true representation of the most unique Indian films made in the last year.
  
Too bad that The Bong Connection turned out to be the only disappointment of the festival. It was a poorly scripted and unevenly directed and acted film, which did no justice to Bengalis in India and the US. But the rest of the festival, curated by Uma Da Cunha and MOMA’s Joshua Siegel, was a treat for those who miss the film scene in India. And the festival would not have been possible without the backing of Marguerite and Kent Charugundla—owners of the Tamarind Art Gallery in midtown Manhattan. Also sponsoring India Now was the Indo American Arts Council—a premiere organisation that brings all facets of Indian and South Asian culture to New York City. Da Cunha’s programming was eclectic—a few popular films—Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara, Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor and Dibakar Banerjee’s Khosla Ka Ghosla; and then new films including Rahul Dholakia’s Parzania, Arindam Mitra’s Shoonya, Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Kaalpurush and Chitra Palekar’s Maati Maay.
  
Parzania opened the festival and Dholakia was present to introduce the film to a sold out audience in MOMA’s 400-seat Titus Theater 1. Before the screening, Dholakia mingled with invited guests at a reception at Il Gattopardo—an Italian restaurant located across the street from MOMA. Among the celebrities were Salman Rushdie, Mira Nair, her husband Mahmood Mamdani, Dev Benegal and Nandita Das—who plays the lead in Maati Maay. Das spent the whole week in New York and was also present at the festival’s closing night reception at the Tamarind gallery.
  
To coincide with the festival, the Tamarind gallery opened a special exhibition of Indian film posters from the Charugudlas’ private collection. The first ever exhibition of Indian movie posters in New York, the collection included original framed announcements of Mughal-e-Azam, Mother India, Shaan and a blast from the past—the campy Victoria No. 203, showing images of Pran and Ashok Kumar in tacky wigs and moustaches.
  
But the real treat of the festival were the two shorts films that Da Cunha brought to New York—Santana Issar’s documentary Bare and Gitanjali Rao’s masterful work of animation—Printed Rainbow. Both films have been showcased in India and abroad, but the talents of the two young filmmakers are worth noting.
  
In her 11 minute short funded by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, Issar takes old home movies with herself, her sister and parents, and overlaps them with recordings of family’s phone conversations, as she attempts to reach out to her alcoholic father. A handsome looking man in his youth, Issar’s father is now reduced to a broken voice, coping with his life alone. His wife has left him and his one daughter has not talked to him for over two years. It is harrowing to watch a dark family secret revealed in public. And the home movies are a constant reminder of the good days that are long gone.
  
Rao’s Printed Rainbow has won many awards, including the Kodak Discovery, Young Critics Award and Petite Rail D’Or—all three at the Critics Week at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.
  
An original story, inspired by Rao’s mother and her love for cats, the film talks about an old lady and her feline companion. Their dull life is depicted in black, white and shades of grey. But often, the old lady opens up her collection of match boxes. Then looking at the colourful landscapes painted on the boxes, she steps into magical worlds. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins, the lady experiences the colourful worlds—a much happier place for her and her cat. One filmgoer who watched the entire festival declared that Printed Rainbow was the best work shown at India Now and he was probably right.