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Mira Nair is an award winning film maker whose film credits include Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, and The Namesake. Her newest film, opening this Friday in theaters, is called Amelia, a biopic about Amelia Earhart, the legendary women’s rights advocate and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. Nair’s biggest budget film to date stars actors Richard Gere and two-time academy award winner Hilary Swank and is already generating Oscar buzz. But the project closest to the acclaimed film maker’s heart is her new organization called Maisha, a film lab headquartered in Kampala, Uganda, to train East Africans and South Asians in the art of film making. The word Maisha means “life” in Kiswahili and the program’s slogan states its agenda simply, “If we don’t tell our stories, no one will.” Each year Maisha brings together top professionals from all aspects of the film industry, with a group of students to educate and train them to tell their stories through film.

GUEST: Award winning film maker Mira Nair

Mira Nair is hosting a benefit reception and preview screening of Amelia with her film lab Maisha and the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. The screening is happening tonight but it is already sold out. A pre-screening reception is happening at Chakra Cuisine, 151 S. Doheny Blvd in Beverly Hills and they will be adding names to stand-by list for the film screening there. For more information, call 510-682-6624.

Find out more about Maisha at www.maishafilmlab.com

The screening is being co-sponsored by the Indian film festival of LA works to create a supportive environment for indian filmmakers and films and build bridges between them and the industry some of the programs include the Indian film fund evelopment Grant of up to $10,000 aimed at helping screenwriters develop and fine-tune their scripts as well as to strengthen these writers’ profile in the US, and the festival itself. More information is available at www.indianfilmfestival.org.