Filmi South Asian Film Festival ● Brought to you by ROGERS ● September 30th-October3rd, 2010

Bold and Courageous, FILMI 11 has something for everyone
The 11th Annual FILMI Toronto’s South Asian Film Festival (FSAFF) will be presented October 1st – 4th at the AGO, Revue Cinema and Bloor Cinema, The vision of FILMI Toronto’s South Asian Film Festival is to promote, discover, introduce and celebrate cinematic endeavours by talented South Asian filmmakers, and highlight works with South Asian themes that can be brought to a mainstream audience.

Canadian PREMIERE - ‘Ashes’ – ASHES is a cautionary tale of mental illness, greed, and the definition of family both real and imagined. The story of two brothers living in the inner city, as one descends into the grips of manic depressive schizoid disorder, the other, Ashes, absconds from his responsibility and tries to become a wealthy drug dealer. Fraught with contradiction, the story is a meditation on how easy it is to fall through the cracks of today’s health care system and how we ultimately find grace in the face of suicide.

CANADIAN PREMIERE – ‘The Taqwacores’– A hardcore, Muslim punk rock scene that deals with the complexities of being young and Muslim in modern-day America. Based on the novel my Michael Muhammed Knight of the same name.

FILMI Music Video’s – Preceding each film premiere, FILMI 2010 will also be presenting world premieres of new music videos by artists such as Canadian Bollywood supergroup RDB & Nindy Kaur ; JUNO Nominated Mississauga R&B singer Deesha ; and Montreal dance group The Bilz among many others, as part of FILMI's 3rd annual music video segment programmed by Canadian music personality Raoul Juneja (a.k.a. Deejay Ra).

FILMI Shorts Programme - Examining the future directors from the South Asian Diaspora. The year’s shorts are all Toronto Premieres and all are BOLD and Courageous; Anand Kanna, The eerie DGC nominated film ‘Serum 1831’, New York’s Award Winning ‘Gareeb Nawaaz’s Taxi’, The amazingly crafted ‘Rendered’ and the Brilliant film of Canadian Jay Fields’ The Pickle and Patriacche’

Closing Night Film – World PREMIERE - FILMI Presents ‘Spirit of South Asia’ by Richie Mehta and Cyrus Sundar Singh. A film made in part by Vision TV The Spirit of South Asia examines the lives of 23 prominent Canadians of South Asian heritage. It looks at how their ethnicity and spirituality (or lack of spirituality) impacts their profession. Among those profiled are actress Lisa Ray, world famous choreographer Lata Pada, author and poet Priscilla Uppal, celebrity chef and Globe & Mail columnist Vikram Vij, entrepreneur and humanitarian Surjit Babra, the captain of the Canadian cricket team Ashish Bagai and the special advisor to Joint Forces Afghanistan Lt. Col. Sarjit Hajaan.

Filmi 11 is proud to have in attendance Samrat Chakrabarti (Kissing Cousins, Waiting City), Ajay Naidu (Office Space, Loins of Punjab) , Richi Mehta (AMAL), Cyrus Sundar Singh and much more …
The Filmi team would love to have you at our event to encourage South Asian Filmmakers.
Please RSVP your presence by Wednesday, 29th September 2010 to diksha@filmi.org

Hope to see you all there!

-Diksha for StarBuzz weekly, Toronto