Top Indian filmmakers joining New York Bollywood event

New York: The Big Apple is set to host a two-day educational conference, themed `Bollywood: Beyond the Song and Dance,` featuring some of the most successful Indian filmmakers in the business.

Scheduled for Oct 6 and 7, 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, as the Indian film industry is known, according to the organisers. "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," said Ajay Shrivastav Communications Director of Mumbai and News York based Molecule. "We want to educate anyone who is interested in Bollywood about what it takes to make a film a `hit,`" he said noting, "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," Shrivastav said. Attendees include Madhur Bhandarkar, national award-winner for best director for "Traffic Signal", Imtiaz Ali, nominated for best director for recent super hit "Rockstar" and 2007`s "Jab We Met", Zoya Akhtar, FilmFare Award winner for best director for "Zindagi Na Milege Dobara" and Anuraadha Tewari, script writer of "Fashion", "Jail," and "Heroine." IANS