Desi Train

Ok all Hardcore Bollywood fans - If you are in Southern California, here’s some good news. IFFLA is organizing an Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles from April 19 to April 22.

And Naseeruddin Shah will be honored at this year’s festival. Naseer will be here for this. Yesss!!!!!!!!

The Bad:

The festival is in LA, Wednesday to Sunday. That means, if you don’t live in LA, you may end up missing Wednesday and Thursday’s events… Driving an hour or two in LA Traffic on a weekday, after 12 hours at work is, to put it simply, exhausting.

More Bad:

Naseer “MAY” be present for a 30 minute questionnaire session on Friday - April 21 at 7:30 pm when his movie “Manthan” is shown. (Can’t find the link where I read about this one.)

Now there’s a bag full of questions to ask Naseer. And it doesn’t look like you will be allowed to ask more than one question in those 30 minutes. And since Desi Train is a blog site and no way connected to the press, it looks highly improbable that we’ll get a deep insight into Naseer’s cinematic intelligence. May have to give this golden opportunity a miss :((

Come-on!!! It’s Friday. How the hell are Naseer fans gonna be able to be there by 7:30? Friday, Evening, Work, LA Traffic - Me going x(

More more Bad:

Can’t say if the selection of movies is satisfactory. Where is Vishal Bhardwaj’s Blue Umbrella or Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday?

We would have loved to see more details of the movies being shown. Those two line details of the movies being shown at the festival just don’t do it. Not much is known about the new directors, their prior works or backgrounds. A few pictures put up for each of the movies being shown, would have been a big help (Hey I’m more of a visual person)

Though it’s an Indian Film Festival, movies in Hindi or English are being shown. Where are the good products in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and other languages? This would have been such a good opportunity to view those movies which are being raved about in the media, but we haven’t been able to see them.

Now the Good:

The festival opens with Water on Wednesday, April 19 at 7:30pm. Me not be able to make it.

“Parzania” is up at the festival!!! Starring Nasser and Sarika, the movie based on Gujarat riots, is a not to be missed opportunity!!! Parzania will be shown on Thursday at 7:15pm - Bad bad bad. Orange County to LA in 30 minutes?… this no look good [-( Depending on how soon can I wrap things at work - I may or may not be able to make it for this one :-??

More Good:

Hold your breath - Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday isn’t here. But his first Paanch will be shown at the festival :d And it will be shown on Saturday, April 22 at 8:30… me going Balle Balle \:d/ Will be there for this one!!!

More More Good:

A huge chunk of shorties. A neat time to check out the works of new talented directors. Will be there for the ones being shown on Saturday and Sunday noon times.

Meet up

Those who would be attending the Festival and would like to meet me and other movie enthusiasts at the Festival over chai and samosa, send me an email. I’ll try my best to get all of you movie fanatics together. It would be nice to meet you guys and what better place and event to meet than a desi film festival. This get together is gonna be filmi…. very filmi!!!

The details

The IFFLA’s website is here.
The Festival program details can be found here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 9:10 am and is filed under Bollywood.
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