What she wants to show is the vast diversity of Indian cinema: "It's Satyajit Ray and it's art movies and Bollywood, so many faces of the country that are all represented through the various types of filmmaking, in so many languages, in so many styles. It's a great experience for both Indians and Americans in the U.S. I believe even the music will cross over."

These exciting times arrive just as the Indian film industry itself is changing, with greater interaction between art house films and Bollywood. The noted art house filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh's Choker Bali, for instance, starred the major Bollywood draw Aishwarya Rai.

Bollywood is also borrowing some of the techniques and sensitivities of art house cinema.

Vatsal says, "You are seeing very commercial films that are trying to do things very differently and are taking a new approach to filmmaking."

One of the films in Cinema India is Maqbool, a chilling retelling of Macbeth, set in Mumbai's underworld, a tightly drawn tale that never veers from the narrative, even though it has its mandatory couple of songs.

Then there is Waisa Bi Hota Hai by debut director Shashanka Ghosh who helped launch MTV in Asia and was instrumental in creating Channel V. Says Vatsal, "He's made a film which combines Bollywood style with a Quentin Tarantino kind of take on story telling with a MTV sensibility to appeal to a younger urbanized Indian viewership that has been brought up on a diet of cable TV."

This irreverent and fast-moving fun film captures all the chutzpah of contemporary Bombay where so many worlds intersect. In fact the producer often introduces it to audiences as Bollywood 2004. Says Ghosh, "We are far more exposed to global influences so it becomes an interesting kitchri. The cable has changed audiences tremendously and it's created a whole new urban market for film."

In this new India the multiplexes make it possible to screen many different kind of movies, catering to different audiences. Says Ghosh, "What's happening is that from the traditional 1,500 seaters they've come down to theaters which seat 150 or 300 people. So it gives the theater owners as well as audiences a lot of choices. It's changing viewing habits."

A whole new generation seems to be taking center stage in India, both as audience and filmmakers. Says Vatsal: "So you have these young audiences that are being exposed to a lot of different material, and a lot of specific youth programming. You also have young directors coming out of Bollywood who are trying to combine those kind of influences with American-style youth filmmaker influences with a Bollywood sensibility."

Last year 40 new directors debuted in the industry, representing a sea change in a tightly knit community. According to Ghosh, three years ago Bollywood was going through the doldrums with about 124 films out of 128 flopping: "That's usually a sign that we don't know what we are doing and we need to look for new ideas. So it's the end of a formula and the start of another and that's what I think happened, we all happened to be on that path."

Earlier, he recalls, when he was trying to get financing for his films, he was always asked about the stars; now he finds financers ask, what's the story? And that is a major change. At the same time, there is a major initiative to make the industry more transparent, so that it can attract public funding.

Director Ram Gopal Varma has played a major role in introducing new types of film-making to India. Some of the films tweak the Bollywood style; others adapt Hollywood films to Indian audience tastes.

Bhoot drew on horror films like Rosemary's Baby, while casting it into an Indian idiom for Indian audiences.

While formula films are still the staple, offbeat films are breaking out.

Then there are English language films like Rahul Bose's Everyone Says I'm Fine, which do well with an urban audience.

The market for English language films has also grown with NRI audiences and regular Bollywood films are also capitalizing on the NRI connection.

The recent big box office hit Kal Ho Na Ho was shot entirely in New York and delves into the NRI life. Says Vatsal, "It's still very much a classic Bollywood style film, but set in New York, and it's in its own way a variation and a new direction for Bollywood films."

As the Bollywood genre expands and enters new territory, Indian cinema becomes more attractive to mainstream American audiences. Indeed, films like Maqbool, says Vatsal, are more geared to a Western audience in the way the narrative is handled. As a result, it's a Bollywood film, but has won audiences at the Toronto Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival.

One of the highlights of the traveling film festival is Bariwali, a beautifully nuanced essay on loneliness, with a powerful performance by Kiron Kher. This offbeat film has won several awards, but since it is not a Bollywood blockbuster, the U.S. market would have been difficult to penetrate. Video stores generally don't carry films by art house or regional producers, and theater owners don't want to take the risk of expensive screenings, which may not give them box office returns.
Says Vatsal, "Museums may show them once or twic,e but over time if we can prove that there's an interest and there's a track record then I think people will start showing these films for a longer duration.

"You start building that way but part of it is building the audience, building the awareness. It's a very slow and painstaking process to do all of that. We are in nine cities this year, I would like to be in 20, 30 cities next year."

Othernteresting developments are afoot with Indian cinema. Mira Nair's Mirabai Films recently teamed up with Bala Entertainment in April to establish International Bhenji Brigade (IBB), a film production company that will create independent Asian cinema for the global marketplace. The company plans to highlight Asian talent by developing features films from Asia and the Diaspora. Over time, this back and forth, this East-West connection may become far more pronounced. Young Indian American filmmakers are getting into the act. In New York, the Indo American Arts Council Diaspora Film Festival has been the germinating ground for many emerging filmmakers, giving them exposure in the mainstream.

A sort of community seems to be developing now with young actors, directors and writers on both coasts. Without big budgets or backers, many of them are attempting to bring their Hollywood and Bollywood sensibilities together on celluloid. There is certainly a chance of one of these becoming a crossover film.

The short film format is also popular with young filmmakers as these are easier on the pocketbook and can still be shown at film festivals and create a buzz. The subjects are getting more innovative: Fillum Star is a zany mock documentary about a desi actor in the days before his first Hollywood movie premieres. The film, by Rehana Mirza, was just released on DVD.

South Asians are now both in front and behind the camera, in production and writing, so more scripts are being written about the South Asian experience. The entertainment industry is also waking up to the burgeoning South Asian population. At least two pilots for sitcoms revolving around Indian families are being planned, Nevermind Nirvana by NBC and East West Values by HBO.

Sonia Nikore, vice president of casting for NBC Primetime television, has overseen casting on over 50 pilots and Emmy winning series including ER, West Wing, Law & Order, Frasier and Seinfeld. A decade ago when Nikore handled an open call in New York for Disney's Jungle Book looking for a South Asian to play the lead, just 50 people showed up (the role finally went to a non-South Asian actor, Jason Scott Lee).

She says, "What is remarkable is that this time I did an open call for Nevermind Nirvana and we had over 250 people show up in LA, and this is not including all the hundreds of actors who auditioned outside the open call. Internationally we looked at over 1,000 actors."

The South Asian population has reached critical mass and the entertainment industry is taking heed of that. At the same time, the characters are also getting more developed and nuanced. Says Nikore, "We are seeing richer characters. South Asians are not getting relegated to the 711 owners, taxi drivers. Sure these roles are still there, but in addition we are finding these very dynamic, interesting three-dimensional characters that writers are creating for South Asian actors."

She points out that with Nevermind Nirvana, written by Ajay Sahgal, the network has recognized the interest by mainstream America in South Asian culture. She says that while the script is about a South Asian family, it's a family dynamic that resonates universally: "The generational conflicts, the humor that comes from cultural differences between generations, it happens in Jewish families, it happens in Italian families, Latin families, it happens across the board. It's not unique to our culture."
East West Values, the HBO pilot that Sabrina Dhawan is working on, is a half hour comedy about a South Asian family in New York. She says the title is a reference to the language used in matrimonial ads in the Indian newspapers: "They are looking for somebody with East West Values. You want them to be Westernized but you want them to be Indian too. I just love that phrase!"

Dhawan, whose thesis film at Columbia, Sanj, won a number of awards at various film festivals, shot to overnight fame with her script for Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding.

She has her arms full of assignments for mainstream projects. She has adapted Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri. Cosmopolitan, her adaptation of the Akhil Sharma story has been directed by Nisha Ganatra and airs on June 1 on PBS; she is working on a screen adaptation of Diary of a Teenage Mom for Lifetime television, produced by Kathleen Kennedy, who produced the Oscar nominated Sea Biscuit. She is also working on a project for Killer Films, which produced Boys Don't Cry.
Her management company, Brillstein-Grey, which also produces major TV shows, such as Sopranos for HBO, asked her to come up with an idea for a TV series about Indians in America. The result was East West Values for HBO. She says, "I think TV is just a great indicator of the interest because it's so much broader and reaches so many more people."

So has it become easier to be Indian and succeed in American entertainment? Says Dhawan: "The answer is yes and no. Yes, it's easier now but it's by no means as easy as you sometimes like to believe. Ethnic papers speak about the big rush to make Bollywood crossover films or films with South Asian subjects and that's really not true. Hollywood is very insular but things are changing considerably."
Dhawan's sojourn in Hollywood showed her just how many desis there are in the entertainment business, at many different levels. How far Indian Americans have infiltrated into the Hollywood system became apparent when she signed on with Brillstein-Grey, which represents major celebrities like Jennifer Anniston, Brad Pitt and Sean Puff Daddy, and found that her manager was not an "All-American" Tom, Dick or Harry, but Jay Khanna!