Senior Rediff.com Contributor Aseem Chhabra is director of the New York Indian Film Festival, an entertainment writer and author of Irrfan Khan: The Man, The Dreamer, The Star. You can e-mail the author at aseem.chhabra@gmail.com
Aseem Chhabra tell us how he watched 302 films in 365 days on airplanes, on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Google, Hulu, DVDs and even on YouTube.
Meet Bollywood's finest casting director Mukesh Chhabra.
Meet Bollywood's finest casting director Mukesh Chhabra.
'In our film industry, there are not many opportunities for actors... Our films are not character based, they are hero and heroine based. The only roles we have for character actors are to play the girl's or boy's dad or a police officer...'
'I swayed my arms in the air with strangers when George Michael sang Careless Whispers' 'I was in heaven.'
Aseem Chhabra lists the elements that he loved and was pleasantly surprised by in the movies.
Aditya Chopra's film reminds us that a well-shot Bollywood romantic film can be so entertaining even when it does not offer anything new, says Aseem Chhabra.
'I don't want a government to tell me that I can't be there for my sister's wedding.'
'Eight years of what Obama had achieved can be wiped out during the Trump administration,' fears Aseem Chhabra, who worries about his country under'an arrogant bully, who whipped up the worst out of his followers.'
'We want to be a nation at par with the best internationally.' 'But why is it in theatre we continue to have such low standards?'
Aseem Chhabra's recommendations for the Mumbai film festival.
Meet Srihari Sathe. Producer. Director. Professor.
'One week after the release of PINK, audiences in India will witness another strong feminist tale, this one set in rural India,' says Aseem Chhabra.
Umrika, which won the audience award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, finally releases in India.
Of all the Indian films screened in Toronto, three stood out for Aseem Chhabra -- A Death in the Gunj, Mostly Sunny and An Insignificant Man.
'Her greatest strength is not her acting or her dancing abilities, but that she has an incredible number of fans.'
'We look and say their life is so tragic.' 'But there are hundreds of millions of people in these circumstances and what can they do but to carry on.'
'The nicest thing is that it is not my film.' 'People bring their own stories and life histories to the film.'
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