Cinema Kinare At Film Noir: An Afternoon of South Asian Shorts

Following the event we’ll be regrouping at a bar in Greenpoint for a post screening reception. Details will be shared with those who RSVP with their ticket purchase. There is no additional cost to attend, let us know if you’d like to come!

Cinema Kinare is a community run project without any institutional support. All funds from tickets will go solely towards covering venue costs. Thank you for your support!

Our Program

Our program is threaded through with explorations of masculinity - in its unraveling and its construction, in its excesses and limitations - as found in friendship, desire, resistance and performance.

We’ll be screening films by four South Asian filmmakers; three of whom are based in and around NYC and will be joining us for a post screening discussion about their craft.

Headlining our program is Alexander Farah’s award winning short, One Day This Kid (2024). The film follows Hamed, an Afghan Canadian boy, as he comes into adulthood under the weight of his father’s expectations - confronting fear, desire and shame, in search of a self unknown. One Day This Kid premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, and won the Grand Jury Prize at South by Southwest 2025 amongst a host of other accolades.

Saccharine Wonderland and Forces That Make Me Shiver (dir. Tushar Gidwani, 6 mins)

“A 6 minute 16mm hybrid documentary that throbs through the stimuli that have influenced my queerness, subtly interrogating the existential fears I have kept at bay over the last decade, separated from my family and friends in India.”

Dating (dir. Ammad Shaikh, 9 mins)

Dating recounts the night 18 year old Omar has his first kiss, followed by a meeting with his date’s ex - newly discharged from the marines. A playful and heartfelt tale of a college freshman lost in his own cinematic fantasy until he’s forced to confront a truth he never accounted for: this isn’t just his story.

An Evening with the People’s Courtesan (dir. Tushar Gidwani, 16 mins)

Shot entirely on 16mm film, hand processed and optically re-printed, "An Evening With The People's Courtesan" is an experimental documentary featuring one of New England's only South Asian drag artists: Kulfi Jaan (he/she/they). Photographed on Kodak Tri-X, Ektachrome, the film attempts to offer an intimate jhalak ("glimpse"), of Kulfi's efforts to build conscious, anti-capitalist spaces that entertain, inform, and champion community.

My Brother, My Friend (dir. Varun Venkatesh & Emil Irimpan, 21 mins)

Buried tensions surface when Manu accepts a spontaneous invitation from his childhood friend, Vish, to spend a weekend at a lakeside cabin. The looming threat of emotional confrontations coupled with a fear of vulnerability push their lifelong bond to its limits.

About the filmmakers

Tushar Gidwani
Tushar Gidwani is a writer-director, and experimental cinematographer whose practice spans street photography, experimental filmmaking, and documentary-fiction. He is currently entering the final year of a Master’s in Fine Arts (M.F.A) program at Emerson College. His work is influenced by a quest to understand the relationship between his body dysmorphia, queerness, and the culture his parents lost after migrating from Pakistan.

Ammad Shaikh
Ammad is a Pakistani-Canadian director and writer based in New York City. His first short film, Dating, is currently on the festival circuit after premiering at CSAFF. His second short, Just Friends, is about to begin its festival run. He is also developing a dark comedy series, Technically, through the Stowe Story Labs.

Varun Venkatesh and Emil Irimpan
Emil and Varun are childhood friends turned filmmakers from California now living in New York. Their first short film My Brother, My Friend premiered at Chicago South Asian Film Festival in September 2025.

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