MUMBAI: Director John Jeffcoat’s film Outsourced will premiere at the fourth annual 2007 South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) to be held from 3-9 October 2007 in New York City. The festival’s closing film will be Bhavana Talwar’s Darm.
Outsourced, to be presented at the Loews Cineplex in Greenwich Village on 4 October, is a modern day comedy of cross-cultural conflict and romance that crosses the globe. Todd Anderson spends his days managing a customer call center in Seattle until his job, along with those of the entire office, are outsourced to India. Adding insult to injury, Todd must travel to India to train his new replacement. But it is through his team of quirky yet likable Indian call center workers that Todd realizes that he too has a lot to learn – not only about India and America, but also about himself. He soon discovers that being outsourced may be the best thing that has ever happened to him.
Conceived by director, John Jeffcoat, and co-written by executive producer George Wing, Outsourced is inspired by Jeffcoat’s own experiences traveling in Nepal and India. Said Jeffcoat, “I think the story resonates with people because it showcases the humor that comes with a clash of cultures, while showing how transformative an experience that can be. It’s easy for Americans to get trapped in a bubble or fall into a haze of thinking this is how life should be. (Once taken out of your element), things that once seemed so important become frivolous.”
Festival director Manjri Srivastava added, “After premiering at Toronto last year and winning numerous audience awards at other festival’s we are excited to share this film with our attendees this year at SAIFF. The film is being independently released in the next few weeks and we wanted to support the filmmakers.”
Jeffcoat has worked within the Seattle film community as a writer, director, producer, cinematographer, and editor. In 1995 he helped launch The Northwest Film Forum, the regions first and only non-profit center for the film arts, serving as a founding board member and later as Vice-president. Currently Mr. Jeffcoat is in production on a feature-length documentary on the world’s largest film industry in Mumbai, India entitled Bollywood and Me.
