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Deepa Mehta's
'Heaven on Earth' in NYC
The Eighth Mahindra Indo-American Arts
Council (MIAAC) Film Festival opens on November
5 at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Deepa Mehta's
Heaven on Earth, a bold film using Indian mythology
underpinnings that soar into modern magical realism
to examine the inner world of an Indian immigrant
to Canada . The five-day festival will screen
New York and US premieres of independent Indian
and Diaspora films at the Museum of Arts and Design,
Jazz at Lincoln Center and Tribeca Cinemas.

"The juxtapositional uptown
- downtown presentation of the festival is reflected
in the programming by our new Festival Director,
L. Somi Roy," said Aroon Shivdasani, Executive
Director of the Indo-American Arts Council. "From
classic films to emerging forms to global cinema
by filmmakers of Indian origin in the UK , US
and Canada and regional Indian cinema in Malayalam,
Punjabi, Marathi and Bengali, the 8th MIAAC Film
Festival offers a wide range of films from established
and emerging filmmakers."
The festival features premieres of fiction and
non-fiction films by internationally renowned
Indian filmmakers such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan's
interlinked stories in Four Women and Ketan Mehta's
Colours of Passion, on Raja Ravi Varma, the Indian
artist who dared to paint and mass-market his
paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses. Young filmmakers
like Richie Mehta, whose touching debut feature
Amal looks at the value of modern India ; and
Manu Rewal, whose black comedy Love Bribes Etc.
reveals the harrowing workings of the Indian bureaucracy,
show the new face of Indian and Diaspora cinema.
The veteran director Shyam Benegal is represented
by his epic Bose: The Forgotten Hero. The dramatic
biography of the Indian nationalist leader who
took up arms and allied with the Axis Powers,
provides a counterpoint to T.C. McLuhan's The
Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch Of Peace,
a documentary that tells the extraordinary story
of a leader who was born into the inconceivable
violence of Pashtun warrior society but adopted
the non-violent struggle of Gandhi. Revisiting
history takes a new British turn in the festival
with Mother India 21st Century Remix, a media
performance based on the great Indian epic Mother
India by the London arts group Kala Phool, featuring
live musicians and DJ Tigerstyle; and British
Asian composer Nitin Sawhney's new score for Franz
Osten's ravishing 1929 silent classic A Throw
of Dice and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
The British Asian contribution also includes Shamim
Sarif's I Can't Think Straight, a tender romantic
comedy about a British Asian woman and Palestinian-Jordanian
woman in London , and 60x60, a video installation
of 1-minute films at Aicon Gallery by 20 artists
each from the UK , India and Pakistan . A special
selection of films examines the genre of Indian
films known popularly as Bollywood, with documentaries
on background dancers (Vinay Chowdhry's Personality),
the art of music composition (Brahmanand Singh's
Pancham Unmixed on R.D. Burman, the great Indian
composer) and the making of an action film (Liz
Mermin's Shot in Bombay).
A retrospective section featuring Ketan Anand's
Chetan Anand: The Poetics of Film, which surveys
the work of his father, will be accompanied by
a rare archival screening of the latter's Lowly
City, the first Indian film to be shown (and to
win the Grand Prix) at Cannes in 1946, and the
first film with a score by Ravi Shankar. The 8th
MIAAC Film Festival also features special panels
organized by the Independent Filmmaker Project
(IFP) and New York Women in Film and Television
(NYWIFT). An additional panel called Shooting
in India is designed for US filmmakers interested
in producing in India . The festival's centerpiece,
Slumdog Dog Millionaire, is the latest film by
Danny Boyle, the acclaimed director of 28 Days,
Trainspotting and other films. This Dickensian
dazzler, winner of the Audience Award at the 2008
Toronto Film Festival, is about a young man from
the slums of Bombay whose earnings on the Hindi
version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? begin
to mount to unsettling and gigantic proportions.
The festival will close with Little Zizou, award-winning
screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala's directorial
debut, presented by her long-time collaborator
Mira Nair. Religious bigots and reformers clash
in this funny satire set in the Fellini-esque
world of India 's educated, eccentric, miniscule
Parsi community.
The Indo-American Arts Council is a registered
not-for-profit arts organization passionately
dedicated to showcasing, building awareness, and
celebrating artists of Indian origin in the performing,
visual and literary arts. Annual festivals of
art, dance, playwrighting and film are scheduled
through the year, with several special events
and book launches. For further information please
visit www.iaac.us. The IAAC Film Festival was
born in the aftermath of 9/11 in response to Mayor
Giuliani's call to New Yorkers to help rebuild
a limping city.
The First Annual film Festival opened its doors
with Film Diaspora Godfather Ismail Merchant and
closed with New York 's favorite Indian filmmaker
Mira Nair. Three years ago, Mahindra & Mahindra
joined forces with the IAAC Film Festival by becoming
the lead sponsor, changing the name of the festival
to The MIAAC Film Festival. For further information
please visit www.iaac.us.For tickets (on sale
October 15) and a full list of films at this year's
festival, visit http://www.iaac.us/MIAAC2008/index.htm.
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