3rd i’s shorts program goes coast-to-coast this year, with a kaleidoscope of short films from the shores of California to New York.

Aliens, bicycles, Punjabi food and Sikh pride are the fodder for new music videos by Bay Area musicians and hip-hop artists: 50 Shades of Beige (Single Beige Female, 2012, USA, 6 mins, in English); The Cycle Beat (Tony Welch, 2012, USA, 3.5 mins, in English); Mandeep Sethi’s Unfilmed Fantasia (Rahat Mahajan, 2012, USA, 3.5mins, in English); Biz Kulfi’s Khala Peela (Harjot Singh, 2012, USA, 3.5 mins, in English).

Other emerging Bay Area filmmakers include Abhi Singh and Rucha Humnabadkar: Singh’s Americanized (2012, USA, 4mins, in English) is the portrait of a Sikh teenager caught between two worlds, while Humnabadkar’s Arranged Marriage (2012, USA, 8mins, in English) offers a humorous twist on immigrant identity.

Humor is also aplenty in Fawzia Mirza and Ryan Logan’s The Queen of my Dreams (2011, USA, 3 mins, in English), a queer send-up on 70s Bollywood. While Shazia Shrivastava’s Do Pahar (2011, India, 29 mins, in Hindi with English subtitles), which was co-directed and co-scripted with her mother Sharifa Roy, is a captivating drama about the beginnings of a friendship between an old woman and a hit man – one that will change both their lives forever. Watch Do Pahar Trailer.

Sushma Khadepaun-Parmar’s Clay (2012, USA, 12mins, in English and Bengali with English subtitles) is a gorgeous tapestry of sound and image, about ‘letting go’, and The Monkey Man is an excerpt from the feature doc Jugaadoo (Kumar/Alex/Colin, India/USA, 2012,10.5 mins), the story of three friends on a journey across India and the various people they meet along the way.

Join us for Dance, Desi, Dance: 3rd i’s Birthday Bash later that evening, and meet many of the filmmakers up close and personal!