By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHELSEA — When Payal Sethi, a New Yorker for over a decade, decided to leave for married life in India, she chose an unconventional way to say goodbye.
Over a three-day flurry last December, she directed "Grant Street Shaving Company," a short film homage to the parts of the city that touched her heart — corners of Central Park and Chinatown, streets in Brooklyn and decks aboard the Staten Island Ferry. The titular "Grant Street," where a widower searches for a gift from his wife, serves as a stand-in for the Lower East Side's Grand Street.
This week, "Grant Street Shaving Company" is one of five selections in the short film competition at the South Asian International Film Festival, running Wednesday night through Tuesday, Nov. 2.
"In New York, everybody's left home, whether they've left Cincinnati or they've left New Delhi, they've come here to make a life," said Pooja Kohli, 34, the film's producer and Sethi's business partner at FilmKaravan. "I think this is film is about that, about being in love with what you really do but also not forgetting who you are."
Sethi is joined in the shorts competition by another South Asian New Yorker, Chelsea-based director Prithi Gowda, 35.
Gowda's film, "Televisnu" skips from an urban call center to the Indian countryside, and ultimately follows its young heroine inside the mouth of Visnu, the Hindu God said to create the world from his dreams.
Its core message explores the dilemma young women face in weighing the romantic ideal of marriage that Americans hold against the Indian value of marriage as a means of bringing together families.
"As a modern American woman, dealing with these two conflicting perspectives was a real struggle for me," said Gowda, who grew up in Detroit but spent summers in Bangalore. "What's ironic is that in ancient Indian culture, the ancient philosophy says that you should follow your own path rather than follow what society says."
"Grant Street Shaving Company" premieres Friday night at the School of Visual Arts Theater in Chelsea. "Televisnu" shows Thursday night at the SVA Theater.
