Indian Film Festival Houston 2009

The Indian Film Festival will for the very first time be held in Houston, from Sept 21-25 2009. Local papers like the Voice of Asia have been covering this first-time-ever event, and in yesterday’s paper there was a full page ad for it. Their website has a schedule of the films being shown, with links to the various introductory shindigs, and the yet-to-happen post-event gala. In the shindig category comes the party at the Consul General Sanjiv Arora’s home and the photo on the main page prominently features folks like director Sutapa Ghosh, who is Houston based, and actually President of a company called CinemaWalla (I clicked on the link at the bottom and found that CinemaWalla actually has ventures in film, wine and steel – yeah steel !)

The film selection is a little desultory – I had hoped to see films like “Little Zizhoo” and “Sita sings the blues” here, but the only one I recognize from the festival circuit is “Smile Pinki”. Premiering here is Deepti Naval’s “Do Paise Ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane Ki Baarish”, and Sushil Rajpal’s Antardwand. “Do paise ki dhoop, chaar aane ki baarish” premiered in Cannes, so it isn’t exactly the World Premiere (as stated on the Website), unless the US is the world 🙂 . It stars Rajit Kapur and Manisha Koirala, and if Naval is as good behind the camera as she was in front of it, this will be a film to wait for.

And Antardwand actually released in 2007, and hasn’t seen the light of day in the US until now – it will subsequently also be screened at the South Asian International Film Festival in New York this October . It is about the practice of bridegroom abduction, (common I’m told in parts of Bihar) and stars among the known faces, Vinay Pathak and Raja Chaudhary.

Supriyo Sen’s 10 minute documentary titled “Wagah” will also be screened. Wagah won the 6th Berlin Today Award at the Berlin Film Festival, 2009. Wagah , which is about the change of guard ritual at the Wagah border, is Sen’s third film.