November 22, 2010 (Showbiz PR Wire):Five days of sold-out feature, shorts,and documentary screenings, "Bhumika: The Roles of Smita Patil," aretrospective of the late actress' films, in partnership with the FilmSociety at Lincoln Center, nightly red-carpet events, film industry panels,and celebrity-packed after parties all came to a close on Sunday, November14 with a prestigious awards ceremony at the SVA Theater in Manhattan,following the closing night film "Cooking with Stella." The longest-running,most prestigious Indian film festival in the country, the MahindraIndo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival, recognized noteworthydirecting, writing, and acting in the following categories:
* Best Picture - "The Well (Vihir)"
* Best Actor - Ajay Naidu, "Ashes"
* Best Actress - Seema Biswas, "Cooking with Stella"
* Best Director - Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, "Shor"
* Best Screenplay - Rituparno Ghosh, "Memories in March"
* Best Documentary - "Ganesh, Boy Wonder," Director Srinivas Krishna
* Best Short Film - "Charulata...A Sequel...of the Life Untold!"Director Sangeeta Padmanabhan
* NYU @ MIAAC: Mobile Bollywood - Directors: Anna South, Casey Knight,and Raymond Wei
* Special Achievement Award for Significant Contribution to theGlobalization of Indian Music - presented to Oscar and Grammy-award winningcomposer A.R. Rahman and accepted by director Mani Ratnam
The jury comprised of some of the most well-known critics, actors,directors, and academics in world cinema including: Claus Mueller, KathleenCarroll, Jerry Carlson, Madhur Jaffrey, Parag Amladi, Ashish Avikunthak,Vinay Chowdhry, Udayan Gupta, Poorna Jagannathan, Kavery Kaul, JosephMathew-Varghese, Zenobia Shroff, Ingrid Scheib-Rothbart, Parvez Sharma,Rahul Bose, Wayne Sharpe, and Nilita Vachani.
Celebrities who attended the 10th annual festival included: Mani Ratnam,Suhasini Maniratnam, Mira Nair, Dilip Mehta, Seema Biswas, SendhilRamamurthy, Madhur Jaffrey, Ekta Kapoor, Tusshar Kapoor, Padma Lakshmi,Rahul Bose, Salman Rushdie, Aasif Mandvi, Samrat Chakrabarti, Manu Narayan,Tannishtha Chatterjeee, Seema Biswas, Ajay Naidu, Arun Vaidyanathan, SaritaChoudhry, Sanjoy Nag, Srijit Mukherjee, and many others.
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JINGO Media - Jitin Hingorani
Jitin@jingomedia.com
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--Showbiz PR Wire