Don't miss the 2018 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, the premiere showcase of groundbreaking Indian cinema, which is taking place April 11-15 at Regal LA Live. This year's lineup features exciting, award-winning new work from Indian filmmakers around the world. Gala tickets and passes, as well as regular screening tickets, are now available at www.indianfilmfestival.org. Get a $2 discount on all regular screening tickets with promo code AMOEBA2018PP.

The festival will open with In The Shadows, starring Manoj Bajpayee in a tour de force performance as a reclusive shopkeeper who vows to rescue his young neighbor from abuse at the hands of his father. The film premiered at the Mumbai Film Festival and features an impressive Bollywood cast that also includes Ranvir Shorey, Neeraj Kabi, Shahana Goswami, and introduces Om Singh as the young boy. The film’s award-winning Los Angeles-based director Dipesh Jain – making his feature debut – will be in attendance along with star Manoj Bajpayee.

The festival closes with the Los Angeles premiere of Village Rockstars, one of the most lauded Indian films on the festival circuit in the past year. The film premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and is directed by emerging Indian filmmaker Rima Das. The film -- written, shot, edited, and directed by Das -- is a touching coming of age story of a ten-year-old girl in a remote Assamese village who dreams of buying a guitar and starting her own rock band. Purchase your IFFLA Gala ticket for this event on Sunday, April 15. The screening is preceded the Awards Ceremony featuring a prestigious jury: Reza Aslan, Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour, and Sundance breakout Aneesh Chaganty.

We’re proud to be a sponsor of the 15th Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA), which will take place April 5-9 at Regal L.A. LIVE.

IFFLA is devoted to a greater appreciation of Indian cinema and culture by showcasing films, supporting emerging filmmakers, and promoting the diverse perspectives of the Indian diaspora. The five-day festival is the premiere platform for the latest in cutting-edge global Indian cinema and bridges the gap between the two largest entertainment industries in the world – Hollywood and India. The festival will showcase more than 25 films from the Indian filmmaking community across the globe, host the highly anticipated Opening and Closing red carpet Galas, and the Closing Awards ceremony.

The Festival will open with Lipstick Under My Burkha and its impressive ensemble cast of Konkona Sen Sharma, Ratna Pathak, Aahana Kumra, and Plabita Borthakur in a dramatic, but irreverent and vibrant film about women and faith. The festival closes with the Los Angeles premiere of Hotel Salvation, the debut feature of Shubhashish Bhutiani, whose 2013 short film Kush was shortlisted for the Live Action Short Film Oscar and won IFFLA’s 2014 Audience Award.

India is home to over 1.21 billion people, roughly 18% of entire human population. Indians speak Austroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-European, and Tibeto-Burman languages (as well as two language isolates) and there are over 2,000 ethnic groups in the vast country. India's considerable diversity, however, tends to be simplified or overlooked in the west, where Hindi language Bollywood cinema becomes metonymic for the entire Indian film industry and North Indian cooking (rather than being subdivided into Awadhi, Bihari, Bhojpuri, Kumauni, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Rajasthani, or Uttarpradeshi) becomes shorthand for the cuisine of an entire subcontinent.



THE TRIPURI

One of the less-widely recognized or discussed ethnic groups in India are the Tripuri (also known as the Tipra or Tipperah). They are believed to have migrated from somewhere in Western China to the Brahmaputra Valley at least 2,000 years ago -- which may sound like a long time ago but is relatively recent in a subcontinent believed to have been first settled by humans at least 70,000 years ago and another hominid species, Homo heidelbergensis, perhaps as many as 800,000 years before them. 

CIIS Public Programs & Performances and Amoeba Music present virtuoso sitar player Shujaat Hussain Khan on Friday, May 2nd at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco.

Shujaat Hussain Khan belongs to the Imdad Khan gharana of the sitar and is the seventh in an unbroken line from a family that has produced many musical masters. He is the son and disciple of the master sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan. His musical pedigree continues back through his grandfather Ustad Inayat Khan, his great-grandfather Ustad Imdad Khan, and his great-great-grandfather Ustad Sahebdad Khan - all leading artists of their generations.

At the age of three, Shujaat began practicing on a specially made small sitar, and by the time he was six the child prodigy started giving public performances. Since then he has performed at all the prestigious music festivals in India and he has traveled around the world performing in Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe.

Shujaat has his own unique style of playing. His approach to rhythm is largely intuitive, fresh and spontaneous, always astonishing his audiences. He was recently a visiting artist at UCLA and currently lives in New Delhi, touring throughout India, the United States, and Europe each year. 

Get your tickets HERE!

Little India is a small neighborhood within Artesia centered on Pioneer Blvd. However, since the population of Artesia surrounding Little India is more Mexican, Filipino and Chinese (not to mention home to smaller but significant number of Koreans and Vietnamese), the city council and mayor rather lamely compromised, officially designating it the "International and Cultural Shopping District." Catchy, huh? That silliness suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of what a designated ethnic enclave is... that is, a community that retains a cultural distinction from the larger community. Oh well, everyone knows it as Little India, whether it's official or not.