TSAFF 2022 | INTERVIEW: A Conversation with Lucy Mukerjee, Programming Director

Lucy Mukerjee is the Programming Director for the Tasveer South Asian Film Festival. In her career in the film industry, she has been a film producer and has held prominent programming roles at festivals like OutFest and Tribeca Festival. With a passion for activism and the arts, she works to elevate marginalized storytellers and create access and visibility for underrepresented identites.

In this interview, I talk with Lucy about her role with TSAFF, which not only includes programming the festival, but also overseeing the Tasveer Film Fund program. We discuss her experience in film programming as well as what films and events attendees can look forward to at TSAFF this year. Lucy also explains the significance of the Tasveer Film Fund, what the program has accomplished so far, and the ambitions they have for this program in the future. She also explains how identity-based festivals like TSAFF differ from larger festivals and why it’s important to support these kinds of festivals.

“Try and see the same film at different festivals and experience the different vibe that you get,” she says in the interview. “Just the difference at an identity-based festival of being in a room with everyone, it feels like family, everyone’s kind of responding to the nuance…it just feels like everyone’s laughing in the right places and appreciating the subtleties.” This is an experience we can look forward to enjoying more of at TSAFF.

The 17th Tasveer South Asian Film Festival is going on November 3rd to November 20th. You can learn more about TSAFF on the festival's official website: https://tasveerfestival.org/