5TH ANNUAL NEW JERSEY SOUTH ASIAN CINE FEST
19 North American Premieres! 5 East Coast Premieres!
WHEN: Friday, October 21 – Sunday, October 23
WHERE: Big Cinemas Oak Tree Road, Edison, NJ
As the only cine fest of its kind in New Jersey, NJISACF brings 36 films from 9 different countries from the South Asian sub-continent, North America and Europe; across gender, age-levels and themes. Also, with its mission to support women film-makers, the festival will feature such films from women directors as Playing the Taar by Roya Sadat (Afghanistan), Meherjaan by Rubaiyat Hossain (Bangladesh), I AM by Indian American filmmaker Sonali Gulati, Jan Villa and Madsong by Tiger award winner Natasha Mendonca (India/USA), Lucky Red Seeds by the only female Malayalam filmmaker Anjali Menon, Beyond Grace by Sara and Urs Baur (US), Janani by Rima Amrapurkar (India), and Pink Saris by Kim Longinotto (UK).
To make the whole event more meaningful, the festival will offer audience to interact both personally and in Q&A sessions with over 10 selected filmmakers. In addition, the festival will host two panel discussions on Homophobia: A discussion on Homosexuality & family values, and Women: A graceful pursuit of freedom and dignity.
To honor these films and filmmakers, the festival will also announce awards in such categories as Best Directorial Debut By a Woman; Critic's Choice Award; Best Student Film, along with some of the more traditional awards as Best Actor, Best Director, Best Film, and Best Documentary.
Finally, to maximize the benefit for the filmmakers NJISACF has partnered with Mela, a global multi-platform consumer entertainment service with one of the largest aggregations of premium South Asian video content. A majority of independent films from the region find it extremely challenging to obtain wide distribution and reach the millions of fans who are eager for quality content from both new & under-represented as well as well respected, established filmmakers.
“We really wanted to contextualize not only cinema, but the media in general. We just don’t want to go with the mainstream of the popular, we want to handpick the next Mira Nairs, Gurinder Chaddhas and Deepa Mehtas, support them in their careers and give them that audience and space on the screens,” says Sakti Sengupta, director of the cine-fest.
Mela is a multi-platform entertainment service that provides consumers worldwide one of the largest collections of premium South Asian video content. Mela brings together content from diverse sources by combining dozens of live television channels covering news and entertainment, hundreds of hit Bollywood and regional movies, with first-ever streaming in high-definition, and hundreds of independent films and selected premium videos from the Internet. Please visit www.mela.com for more information.
