Southern Exposure at the South Asian International Film Festival

By Elaine G. Flores

A melange of South Asian cinema was on display at the South Asian International Film Festival, a five-day event held in Manhattan during the first week of December.The landmark series debuted on Dec. 1 with a special screening of Bride And Prejudice, the buzzed-about Miramax film from director Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham). The festival also included 38 films from the South Asian continent, including a documentary marathon called “Films For Freedom.” Screenings took place at the historic Ziegfeld Theater, Clearview Chelsea West and the Rubin Museum of Art. Glammy after-parties were held at some of the city’s most hip hangouts including Cielo, Lotus and NA. The event’s Managing Director, Soman Chainani, discussed the ambitious undertaking with ABCDlady.

You’re launching this for the first year.
This is our first year, exactly.

Okay, let me ask you, how did this come about?
Well, there is an organization called SANA, the South Asian Networking Association, that our founder, Shilen Amin, started six years ago. It is the premier social organization and event organization for South Asians in this country. In the [New York] Tri-State area alone, we have a mailing list of 82,000, and across the country, a mailing list of about 356,000. For six years, SANA’s been doing social events and entertainment events, but always just catering to sort of a young, urban, hip clientele. SANA almost got a sort of monopoly; Shilen realized that we’re not just an organization that does social events -- we really are a premier entertainment organization. He thought, “How else can we use our audience to really give them what they want?” So he started looking at areas where there seemed to be a vacancy in the marketplace, where there was just something that was missing. And the number one thing that he came up with is that there was just no film festival for our audience right now. New York is the hotspot for South Asians and there was no film festival. It’s really strange if you think about it -- it should have happened 10 years ago. And I think the problem is people keep trying to do these Bollywood film festivals where you just do a week of song-and-dance movies, but audiences can get those on DVD. A lot of times, the movies are really not that great; they are three hours a pop and it’s something you just can’t sustain as a film festival. So when I talked to Shilen, he brought me in to really take care of the film side and to think about we what could we do on the creative side to make this sustainable. And our decision was really to make this a crossover event that not only appealed to the mainstream by showing the best of Bollywood, but also incorporated all of the other South Asian countries: Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka that aren’t usually in other South Asian film festivals, which mainly tend to go for India. Also, we wanted to showcase other genres such as independent cinema and documentaries. So our main thing was we were going to put together the tightest program ever. In our first year, that was so hard because no one ever wants to give a first-year film festival any movies. We worked so hard and our program, without a doubt. In our first year, it is one of the best that has ever been shown, as far as South Asian film festivals in the world. You look at these movies pound for pound, every move is amazing.

What kind of reaction did you get from the non-South Asian press?
For our first year, we were thinking, “Oh, we only have to go for South Asian press,” but the New York Times came in as a sponsor and Time Warner Cable has run over 200 of our ads. [For a first-time event,] we’re lucky to know we can even get 10 people in the seats. We’ve sold out a 1200-person opening night, most of our screenings sold out, it’s a remarkable, remarkable buzz and I think that’s because the mainstream press jumped on the fact that we weren’t showing campy, kitschy movies. We were showing the best South Asian movies from the last two years.

I do love camp, though….
Trust me, it’s in there. Our opening night we had Bride And Prejudice. We had King of Bollywood, which is total camp and we had the documentary, The Inner World of Shah Rukh Khan. I’d say Shah Rukh Khan is like India’s Tom Cruise, but that’s disrespecting Shah Rukh Khan because he’s like the biggest star, pound for pound, in the world.

So, the bottom line is this festival is about diversity. You know how the mainstream media likes a so-called craze or trend. Did that happen here?
I think the trend they discovered is that--

South Asians exist?
They discovered that a) they exist, b) they have this culture that’s quickly being co-opted into the mainstream and c) that they're rich! That’s something! The South Asian demographic is like the richest in the country, so sponsors love South Asian events. They just jump. We have no trouble--they just jump in. They’re like, “You’re appealing to who?” And we’re like, “Young, professional South Asians.” And they are like, “Okay, we’re there!”

Elaine G. Flores is a feature writer for Soap Opera Digest, columnist for the St. Louis American and freelance writer. She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and lives in New York.

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