First South Asian film festival in US draws big crowds

The inaugural Dallas-Fort Worth South Asian Film Festival (DFW SAFF), featuring 14 documentaries and films, exploring unique circumstances and stories based on South Asia, attracted over 1,000 cinephiles.

The three-day festival from February 27 to March 1 at the Angelika Film Centre in Plano, Texas, kicked off with film "Brahmin Bulls".

It was followed by shorts and documentaries "Katiyabaaz/Powerless", "Asian Pride Project", "Fire in the Blood", and "Tomorrow We Disappear", and women's programming "Blouse", "Happy Raksha Bandhan", and centrepiece film "Sold on Saturday".

Showcase films, included family programming "Ravi and Jane" and "The World of Goopi and Bagha", followed by youth programming shorts "Therapy", "Just Friends", and "Acceptance". The closing night film was the world premiere of "Rough Book".

The producers, directors and actors who attended the festival included, Viveck Vaswani, Tannistha Chatterjee, Mahesh Pailoor, Jeffrey D. Brown, Jane Charles, Dylan Mohan Gray, Suma Reddy, Fahad Mustafa, Deepti Kakkar, Tarun Verma, Arun Sukumar and Ryan Matthew Chan.

"They say everything is bigger in Texas, but I find it's people's hearts that are the biggest," said JINGO Media principal, CEO and festival director Jitin Hingorani.

The festival was produced by JINGO Media, Etihad Airways and Jet Airways, Cambria Hotels and Suites, and CMGRX. It was sponsored by the Shraman Foundation, Parish Episcopal School, Milaap, Living Dreams Foundation, and The Container Store.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)