The 2014 South Asian International Film Festival kicked off Tuesday night with the multi-director movie (brainchild of film critic and director Sudhish Kamath) X – Past is Present:

For a film with 11 directors (9 men and 2 women), it was quite a brofest, leading to many photo ops like this one, with the menfolk front and center, and the ladies waiting in the wings (that’s 3 of the actresses from X):

…until director Rajshree Ojha appeared and talked about her directorial segment of the film (Anu Menon couldn’t make it to the festival):

 

A regular among the NYC Indian film community, actress and producer Pooja Kumar was there as well:

 

Just before the screening of X began, the SAIFF PR people managed to corral the 1o directors present for a group photo:

 

It was a full house Tuesday night, with several alums of previous SAIFF festivals (Sudhish Kamath, Q) among the X directors, seen here for the post-screening Q&A:

 

You can find a full list of films here.  SAIFF 2014 runs until Saturday, November 22nd.

Of particular note in this year’s line-up:  SAIFF veterans & directors of Shor in the City Krishna DK & Raj Nidimoru’s Happy Endings, Titli, Jigarthanda (the only Tamil film in the festival this year) and Pakistan’s Oscar entry Na Maloom Afraad.