Big names at educational conference on Bollywood

Madhur Bhandarkarweb
Madhur Bhandarkar

NEW YORK: New York and Mumbai-based Molecule Communications unveils its first Bollywood event in the Big Apple, Ticket2Bollywood. The two-day educational conference, themed Bollywood: Beyond the Song and Dance, features some of the most successful Indian filmmakers in the business. It also provides a platform for aspiring and established actors, directors, and producers to glean “insider” information about direction, production, script writing, and financing movies in the largest film industry in the world – Bollywood.
The conference is scheduled for October 6 and 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Dream Downtown Hotel (355 W 16th St., between 8th and 9th Avenues). The roster of powerhouse Bollywood “household” names includes:
• Madhur Bhandarkar: National Award-winner for Best Director for Traffic Signal and director of National Award-winning movies Chandni Bar (Tabu), Page 3, and Fashion (Priyanka Chopra). At the end of September, Bhandarkar is releasing the most-awaited movie of the year, Heroine (Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal).
• Imtiaz Ali: Nominated for Best Director for recent super hit Rockstar (Ranbir Kapoor) and 2007’s Jab We Met (Shahid Kapur & Kareena Kapoor). Ali also directed Love Aaj Kal and Socha Na Tha. Most recently, Ali wrote the script for Cocktail (Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone).
• Zoya Akhtar: FilmFare Award for Best Director for Zindagi Na Milege Dobara (Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, Katrina Kaif). Also directed Luck by Chance (Konkana Sen Sharma) and writer of soon-to-be-released Taalash (Aamir Khan, Rani Mukherjee, and Kareena Kapoor).
• Anuraadha Tewari: Gold Medalist for Direction from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and script writer of Fashion, Jail, and soon-to-be-released Heroine.
• At a time in our film history when Bollywood and Indian independent movies are in the international media spotlight, whether it is at Cannes, Sundance, or at the Oscars,” says Molecule Communications Director Ajay Shrivastav, “we want to educate anyone who is interested in Bollywood about what it takes to make a film a ‘hit.’
Our films have gone beyond the Bollywood that portrayed couples ‘fake’ kissing surreptitiously behind trees or having arranged marriages because they had no choice. This young crop of directors and writers is capturing the ‘truest’ sense of what it means to grow up Indian in a global world, and we are thrilled to be presenting all of them together for the first time in the United States during the 100th year of Indian cinema.”

India Post News Service