Crossroad to premiere at South Asian International Film Festival
The fourth annual 2007 South Asian International Film Festival will be held from October 3-9, 2007 in New York City.
The festival will present the North American Premiere of Rajshree Ojha's CHAURAHEN (Crossroads) at the Clearview Cinema at Lincoln Square on October 6, 2007. The film, almost like snippets of collected photographs, brings together similar disconnected people in search for
something to overcome the mundane of reality. It is a film, which is
very different from anything seen in modern Indian cinematic narration, where characters are connected, perspectives are skewed, morality is left ambiguous and the gray area between right and wrong is explored, often through overlapping streams of plots. The characters piece back the fabric of their lives and connect the stories to a natural subjective conclusion.
"I was inspired by Nirmal Verma's short story about three different couples based in Mumbai, Kolkata and Kochi. It is a complex narrative about the six characters and their angst expressed in their regional languages - Malayalam, Bengali, Hindi and English," explains the debutant director. "I wanted to show [overseas audiences] that there is more to India than poverty and mysticism. I want to show that we may wear saris and bindis but we think modern thoughts and have regular ethos and pathos like them," she adds.
" Ms. Ojha has created a beautiful and different narrative feature for Indian cinema," said SAIFF Festival Director, Manjri Srivastava. "
Along with our other independent features and documentaries this year, we are honored to present CHAURAHEN to the SAIFF audience this year."
Rajshree Ojha was born and raised in India and graduated from NYU in 1998. She received her masters at the American Film Institute in 2002, and her film BADGER won the AFI Spirit of Excellence Award for Outstanding Direction. She has participated in several film productions in New York, India and Los Angeles. Rajshree was featured as the Next Wave of Filmmakers to emerge from AFI in the issue of daily "Variety", June 12 2003. She was also honored by The Directors Guild of America (DGA) as a new Asian Voice."Chaurahen" is her first feature film and has been critically acclaimed.
