Mumbai: The Mahindra Group in partnership with the Indo-American Arts Council will present the MIAAC Film Festival in New York between November 7 and 11 November showcasing films with an Indian flavour.

It's an occasion where independent filmmakers from the Indian diaspora will come together to present their work. Head honcho Anand Mahindra is a celebrated business leader, but few are aware that he was a student of filmmaking.

"I used to major in filmmaking during my days in Harvard. Mira Nair was my classmate,” Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of Mahindra and Mahindra, Anand Mahindra said.

And that explains the involvement with the New York festival, which will open this year with the premiere screening of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya, and close with Rituporno Sengupta's festival favourite The Last Lear.

“The festival will promote varied kinds of Indian filmmaking and showcase it to the world,” Mahindra said.

At a time when Western audiences' exposure to Indian filmmaking is restricted largely to mainstream Bollywood films, this festival is being positioned as an opportunity for those films with offbeat and unconventional themes, to make an impression on a global platform.

Hence the inclusion of such diverse films as Pan Nalin's Valley of Flowers featuring Naseeruddin Shah and Milind Soman, Teri Muhan's The Frontier Gandhi, and Arindam Nandy's Via Darjeeling with Kay Kay Menon and Vinay Pathak.

“It's a great platform for people like us to showcase our films abroad, considering the fact we don't have a Shah Rukh Khan featuring in it,” Producer of Via Darjeeling, Shomu Ganguly said.

Headed by a board that includes Mira Nair, the MIAAC Festival will also feature Nair's much-talked-about AIDS Jaago Films, a package of four short films about AIDS that have been directed by Vishal Bharadwaj, Farhan Akhtar, Santosh Sivan and Nair herself.

Also expect a fair turnout from the New York filmmaking community, including representatives of some of the big Hollywood studios looking for the next big thing from the East.