Ashim Ahluwalia

Ashim Ahluwalia

Ashim Ahluwalia, 2012
Born 1972
Mumbai, India
Occupation Film director, producer & screenwriter
Years active 1999–present
Awards Indian National Film Award
2007 – Best Non-Fiction Film, John & Jane

Ashim Ahluwalia (born 1972 in Mumbai, India) is a film director and screenwriter. He made his directorial debut with the feature-length documentary John & Jane (2005), which had a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and a European premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, and won him the 2005 National Film Award for Best First Non-Feature Film of a Director.[1] This was followed by his first narrative feature film Miss Lovely, premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.[2][3] which won him the National Film Award – Special Jury Award (Feature film), and Best Production Design at the 61st National Film Awards.[4]

Working outside the mainstream Bollywood film system,[5] Ashim Ahluwalia is one of a new generation of Indian directors which prefers to eschew working with Hindi film stars.[6] His unconventional films blur the lines between documentary and fiction. His short films have shown at the Tate Modern,[7] the Centre Pompidou and at the Venice Architecture Biennale.[8]

Early life

Ashim Ahluwalia grew up in Bombay, India. He attended the city's Cathedral and John Connon School before moving on to Bard College in upstate New York, where he graduated in filmmaking in 1995.

Career

Ahluwalia began his film career with a series of experimental films made between 1993–2002. His first short, The Dust (1993), was made by reworking home movies shot by his grandfather in the 1950s.[9]

He formed an independent production company, Future East, in 2005, providing an infrastructure for him to work outside mainstream film channels.

Ahluwalia was selected by the San Francisco Film Society as their Artist in Residence for 2013.[10]

In May 2013, he received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College, his alma mater.[11] The award is "given in recognition of a significant contribution to artistic or literary heritage."[12]

In November 2013, he was selected to be on the Jury of the 8th edition of the Rome Film Festival for the CinemaXXI section.[13]

Ahluwalia was named "one of the ten best emerging film directors working today" by Phaidon Press in "Take 100: The Future of Film."[14]

Filmography

Feature films

Short films and installations

Notes

References

External links

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