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By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

The first Chicago South Asian Film Festival kicked off Friday, October 1 at the Chicago Cultural Center with a red-carpet event that included celebrities and hundreds of fans. Many accomplished film artists, including Deepti Naval, Aparna Sen, Ajay Naidu, Rajeshwari Sachdev, Rajit Kapur, Baljit Sangra, Umakanth Thumrugoti, Ann Feldman, Ravi Kapoor, and Sandeep Sharma, were in attendance.

The festival opened with Deepti Naval’s Do Paise Ki Dhoop Chaar Aane Ki Baarish, starring Manisha Koirala, Rajit Kapur, and Sanaj Naval, a film about an aging prostitute, her disabled son, and a gay lyricist.

Over the next two days, hundreds attended the 15 other film screenings at the Chicago Cultural Center and Columbia College Chicago.

Actor Ajay Naidu’s directorial debut Ashes made its U.S. premier at the festival. Ashes, in which Naidu starred, is the story of two brothers living in the inner city—one descends into mental illness and the other becomes a drug dealer.

The three-day festival came to a close with Umakanth Thumrugoti’s 7 Days in Slow Motion, starring Rajeshwari Sachdev, Vivek Mushran, Teja, Shiva Varma, Kunal Sharma, and Ayesha Jaleel. The film is about a young boy’s tinsel-town dreams in a typical middle-class family.

Photo of filmmaker Aparna Sen by Karthik Sudhir.

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October 6, 2010