This documentary us takes on a motorcycle journey through the Himalayas of India. over the highest motorable road in the world, and follows a dare devil yogi leading seven Americans to make decisions about life and death while traversing steep, icy cliffs and the chaos of India’s “road killer” traffic. Carrying a prophecy of death in his late twenties, their Yogi leader Anand Mehrotra inspires us to question what it means to truly live and pushes them to the limits of his teachings:  “Only the one who dies, truly lives”.  Produced by Adam Schomer & Jon Fitzgerald  WINNER Audience Aware, San Diego Film Fest  WINNER Cinema Libre Award, Topanga Film. More→

MY ASIAN AMERICANA was submitted  to The White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders’  “What’s Your Story?” video challenge. The challenge requested personal stories with impact, specifically stories of community service. Our short film tells the untold stories of Cambodian American deportees, an issue we feel challenges the ‘challenge’ itself. We made this film as a community of people concerned with justice and invisibility because the issue of deportation is an Asian American issue.

“This film “Handcrafted in Chennai” is a tribute to the wonderful people who build, sell, ride and maintain these beloved machines, and is a heartfelt tribute to the city that Royal Enfield calls home.

The movie was shot in Chennai capturing glimpses of the city and its unique culture and inside the Royal Enfield factory laying emphasis on the way artisans use their hands to give shape to this unique creation of art, the Royal Enfield motorcycle.
A Royal Enfield is a rare breed in an age of mass-produced, user-friendly predictability. This is a mechanical motorcycle, handcrafted with love, engineered with purpose, and designed in a way that gives each machine its own unique character. This character is reinforced by Royal Enfield’s cultural DNA — by where it was born, and by where it is now built.
Its classic British pedigree shows in every line, while the gleaming new engine hints at the devotion that has enabled this legendary marque to thrive in the outskirts of Chennai.

NYC – Mindrelic Timelapse from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

Like Darren Aronofsky’s previous films, The Fountain & Requiem For A Dream, Black Swan focuses on psychological weaknesses that impact the characters’ lives, be they an addiction to drugs, fame or, in Black Swan’s prima ballerina’s case, to perfection.

You don’t have to read up that Aronofsky studied Anthropology (alongside Film and Animation) at Harvard to extrapolate something to that effect from his work. The guy makes brilliant, dark films by concentrating on what makes a film compelling: the characters. It is the characters in Aronofsky’s films that drive the story. They are set up with choices and it is the characters that decide their fate in the film, as opposed to characters reacting when situations arise. Perhaps this is what makes his films so hard to watch and so watchable at the same time.

A psychological thriller set in the world of New York City ballet, BLACK SWAN stars Natalie Portman as Nina, a featured dancer who finds herself locked in a web of competitive intrigue with a new rival at the company (Mila Kunis). BLACK SWAN takes a thrilling and at times terrifying journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect. Patelism guarantees Oscar nominations & wins for this film, it is set to be released December 6, 2010. Clint Mansell is the composer for the film.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, or DDLJ as it’s known, is the longest-running film in history—it released in 1995 and it’s been continuously playing ever since (one theater in Mumbai still has daily showings). The title has an old-fashioned ring to it—it means “The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride”—but it’s about reconciling the past with the future. It captures a moment in time—the mid-1990s—when India liberalized its economy and opened its doors to the world, and with it came tremendous social and cultural change as Indian tradition clashed with Western modernity. Suddenly, Indians weren’t just Indians, but world citizens like never before. The reason the film’s appeal is so enduring is because India is still negotiating those changes and the film’s main character, Raj, resolves those issues of identity within himself.

DDLJ was a film of firsts. Aditya Chopra, the son of filmmaker Yash Chopra, made his directorial debut with DDLJ—at the age of 23. The movie also firmly established a new and important audience for Hindi cinema: non-resident Indians, NRIs as they’re called, Indians who live outside of India. Today, many Bollywood films are specifically made and marketed with this audience in mind.

Kashmir… once known as a paradise on earth, it is now a playground of Devils. A company is generating millions of unaccountable dollars that benefit all powers- from politicians and leaders to bureaucrats in the Indian and Pakistani intelligence. From high ranking army and police officers to the militants and their supporters, everyone gets the piece of the pie.

Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.

It is about the hopes, dreams, dilemannas and disappointments of millions of others who can only watch it from the sidelines of the 2010 World Cup; some not even that.