Farhan Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, others: NYC NOV 11-15

NeeliAankhen

http://www.iaac.us/MIAAC2009/

One of the best Indian film festivals in the world, the Mahindria Indo-American Arts Council Festival, will take place in NYC Nov 11-15. I always find it reliably well-curated, so that when I go to movies I don't know anything about I'm pretty much always engaged and pleased.

There are still tickets to everything - the few sold out things aren't the only screenings of the respective movies.

Other well-known participants include Manisha Koirola, Shyam Benegal, Javed Akhtar, Mira Nair, Anurag Kashyup, and Aparna Sen. If you're interested also take a look at the panel discussions running alongside the festival at NYU.

Can recommend a few I've seen - Fakir of Venice, with Farhan Akhtar, is a comedy with a dark core about people exploiting each other, with the climax at the Venice Biennale

the Air India documentary (with a bit of re-creating) is really eye-opening about the bomb-caused crash of an Air India flight

Welcome to Sajjanpur -- village life, directed by S Benegal

Zanjeer one of the iconic movies of Amitabh Bachchan in the angry young man phase of his career in the 70s, and considered important I think thematically re: the country at that time - I've never seen it and look forward to this rare opportunity to see it on a big screen with Javed Akktar, who wrote it, there to talk about it.

And then in my experience, the documentaries and non-Hindi parts of the program always yield wonderful surprises for me, things you just aren't likely to run into elsewhere.