Aroon Shivdasani is the executive director and founding member of Indo-American Arts Council, New York.

We talk to Aroon about IACC's Annual Film Festival that is opening on November 1, 2006 with Mira Nair's The Namesake.

The IAAC's sixth annual festival will be held from November 1-5, 2006 in New York. You can buy your tickets for the films online at MeraTicket.

JP Dutta's Umrao Jaan; Jagmohan Mundhra's Backwaters; Rehana Mirza's Hiding Divya; Pratibha Parmar's Nina's Heavenly Delights; Nishikant Kamat's Dombivli Fast; Goutam Ghose's Yatra; Aditya Bhattacharya's Dubai Return, Mausi and others are some of the films that will be screened during the festival. A total of 66 feature, short and documentary films will be screened during the festival.

Mira Nair, Kal Penn, Shabana Azmi. Javed Akhtar, Dipti Naval are some of the film personalities that will attend the festival.

Besides the annual film festival, IAAC also org anises an annual workshop for writers, and has regular book reading and art/dance/music sessions throughout the year. The IAAC is working with New York's MOMA on an Indian Film Festival that is scheduled for April 2007.

Aroon is deeply involved in promoting Indian art, culture, cinema and music through IAAC.

Aroon lives with her husband in New York.

Aroon Shivdasani IAAC Film Festival IAAC New York Indian Podcast