Archive for the ‘News’ Category

After Hulla and Leaving Home (documentary on Indian Ocean), filmmaker Jaideep Varma is busy working on his latest documentary film, Baavra Mann. And here’s a trailer of the film.

Here’s more info on the trailer and the film from its youtube account – A trailer of the rough cut of the full-length documentary feature, “Baavra Mann – a film on Sudhir Mishra & other Indian realities”. A film not only on one of Mumbai cinema’s longest lasting and relevant filmmakers but through that prism on a declining cultural life in India.

Aha, finally some documentation of our cinema and some of its prominent voices. Whenever i think about Sudhir Mishra, i often wonder why is there no making of Hazaroon Khawshein Aisi. It’s such a terrific and landmark film, and has a great story behind it. That needs to be documented. Hopefully we will get to hear some bits in this docu.

This trailer surely looks interesting. Though my only concern is Sudhir Mishra is quite overexposed. If you have been tracking him or his films, you probably know everything about him. But it’s nice to see anecdotes about his personal life too. And the film seems to go beyond Sudhir Mishra and his films. So eagerly looking forward to it.

Last few years of Mumbai Film Festival have been wet dreams for any film buff. The game was simple – they picked up all the winners and nominees from all the top film festivals of the world. This year’s list is yet to be out but some titles have been confirmed. And going by these titles, it seems like they are on right track this year too.

  • Among the big ones are Rust and Bone by Jacques Audiard (was in competition at Cannes), Walter Salles’ On The Road and Blancanieves (Snow White) by Pablo Bergera, a reinvention of the Brothers Grimm classic.
  • Nandini Ramnath’s report in Mint Lounge has confirmed few more titles. This includes Michael Haneke’s Amour, David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share, Danish films A Royal Affair and The Hunt, Kauwboy and this year’s fest favourite Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild.
  • Almost all the films have been doing the festival rounds. Amour won the Palme d’Or and Loach won the Jury prize at the Cannes film festival this year. A Royal Affair was in competition at the Berlin Film Festival and The Hunt was in competition at Cannes where its actor Mads Mikkelsen bagged the trophy for the best actor. Kauwboy bagged the best First Feature award at the Berlin Film Festival.
  • Among the documentaries are Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s Celluloid Man which we have been tracking for a long time. Klayman bagged a special jury prize at the Sundance Fest.
  •  There’s also going to be a long list of classics, black & white gems and silent films. Some of the confirmed titles are Franz Osten’s A Throw of Dice (1929), Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America(1984), Dhundiraj Govind Phalke’s Kaliya Mardan, Osten’s Shiraz, Baburao Painter’s Muraliwala (1927) and Sati Savitri (1927), Robert Rossellini’s The Machine That Kills Bad People (1952), Visconti’s Senso (1954), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone (1961), Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Federico Fellini’s Roma (1972), Quo Vadis (1913), and Nanni Moretti’s Dear Diary (1993).
  • Indiewire’s report has also confirmed few more titles which have been restored. The Twentieth Century Fox Archive will present 8 films spanning 40 years in the ‘Fox Classics’ series. This includes Sunrise (1928), How Green Was My Valley(1941), Laura (1944), Leave Her to Heaven(1945), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Wild River(1960), The Leopard and Two for the Road(1967).
  • Seven other films which have been restored will also be screened. This includes Satyajit Ray’s Charulata(1964), The Chess Players (1977), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945), Uday Shankar’s Kalpana (1948), Once Upon A Time In America and The Cineteca Bologna will present two silent Italian silent classics.
  • Festival Dates : 18-25 October, 2012.
  • Venue : NCPA and INOX. Can anyone confirm if Cinemax Versova will also have screenings or not?
  • Shifting the venue to South Bombay is a strange decision when the film industry and related people seems to be mostly from suburbs. If you had been to Cinemax Versova for last year’s fest, you know the kind of crowd it attracted. And at the same time screenings at Metro and Cinemax Sion were going almost empty. I might be biased because Andheri (west) suits me best and travelling in Bombay is quite exhausting. So putting up a poll here.

Pairon Talle, written & directed by Sidharth Srinivasan, will finally have a theatrical release in India on 5th October. The film is released via PVR Director’s Rare.

To quote from the official release, it tells the story of a simple watchman, who is so devoted to protecting his master’s property, that he has lost the very ability to safeguard himself. When realization of his enslavement finally dawns on him, it does so at a bloody price. Will the watchman take destiny into his own hands or will justice be denied him forever?

The stark contrasts of the rapidly urbanizing NCR (National Capital Region) provide the violent backdrop to the film – this is a Delhi you’ve never been shown before.

– It stars Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Saba Joshi, Avtar Sahni and Geeta Bisht in lead roles.

– The film received the prestigious Hubert Bals Fund from Rotterdam Fest and it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010.

And here’s the trailer of the film…

– To know more about the film, click here for it FB page. And to know more about the director, click here.

– Here’s a recco for the film : Film fest curator Meenakshi Shedde calls it “a savage stab at the Shining India myth.”

WHAT : The East Side Story (TESS) is a short film festival organized by the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC-UG). A two-day long event, TESS is one of the few Undergraduate fests looking to recognize raw talent in filmmaking.

WHOM : It is for all student film-makers of India – any student with a valid college ID can participate in any of the categories.

DATES : The festival is on the 14th and 15th of September. The first day is an exhibition where eminent short films will be screened. The directors / crew members of these films will be present to have a discussion with the crowd. The 15th of September is the day of the competition.

FILMS & PRIZESThere are two main categories – ad films and live action. The category of live action has sub-categories.

– Category: Ad films

a. Best Ad Film

1st prize: Rs. 30,000

2nd prize: Rs. 20,000

3rd prize: Rs. 10,000

– Category: Live Action

a. Best Short Film

Rs. 30,000

b. Best Director

An opportunity to be a part of the crew making the next short film for Grey Oak Pictures. The winner will get a chance to work with professional film equipment and interact with well-known actors as well as technicians. The budget of the film will be around Rs. 30,000 and its story will be based on a short story published by Grey Oak Publications.

c. Best Editor

Rs. 10,000

d. Best Cinematographer

Rs. 10,000

e. Best Screenplay

A special gift hamper from Penguin Books India which will contain books related to film-making and screenwriting. These books are all a part of the publication house’s coveted collection of books. Apart from this, a cash prize of Rs. 5,000 will also be given.

– All the winning entries will also be screened at Shamiana’s short film club meetings around India. ().

Pocket Films will take the responsibility of distributing these films around the country and the profits of the same will be shared with the film-makers.

JURY

1. Anjum Rajabali (Screenwriter The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Raajneeti, Aarakshan)

2. Piyush Jha (Novelist/Director – Mumbaistan (novel),  Sikandar, King of Bollywood, Chalo America)

3. Prashant Naik (EditorI am Kalam, Climate’s First Orphans (short film), HOD, Editing Department, Whistling Woods International)

4. Cyrus Dastur (Founder, SHAMIANA – The Short Film Club)

5. Ramanuj Shastry (Chief Creative Officer, Saatchi and Saatchi (India)

CONTACT : For more information, log onto www.tessfilmfest.in or can mail to registrations@tessfilmfest.in

VENUE :  Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (UG), Survey no. 231, Viman Nagar, Pune – 411014

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its complete line-up for 2012. And there are quite a few Indian films in the list.

– The only film with desi connect which is in official competition section is Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children. Click here for more details.

– After its TIFF premiere, Anand Gandhi’s Ship Of Theseus is going to compete for “The Sutherland Award” in The First Feature competition category. To know more about the film click here and here.

– Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalis had its world premiere at the Venice Festival. Now it will have its Gala in the “Dare” segment at LFF. More details about the film here.

– After Cannes and Toronto, Peddlers continues its fest run with screening in “Dare” segment of the fest. Click here and here for more details.

– Rani Mukherjee and Prithviraj starrer Aiyya will have its world premiere at the fest. This is Sachin Kundalkar first Hindi feature film.

– Prakash Jha’s Chakravyush will have a Gala in the Thrill segment and Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar will have a screening in “Treasures” seection.

– The official website of the festival also lists two more films in Indian segment – Save Your Legs and Sri Lankan production With you, Without You.

– To know more about the film festival, films and the screening schedule, click here.

Just before its international premiere at Toronto International Film Festival, the makers of Ship Of Theseus have released three new trailers of the film. Looks damn interesting with some powerful visuals.

If it all seems too confusing to you, click here for its official synopsis and all the other details.

And if you missed its unique posters, we are putting it all here. Click to enlarge.

Telluride Film Festival has finally unveiled its line-up for this year. And Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s documentary film “Celluloid Man : A Film on P K Nair” will have its screening at the fest. According to official release, it will be part of Telluride’s intimate screening room which features behind-the-scenes movies and portraits of artists, musicians and filmmakers.

(Click on the pics to enlarge)

Here’s more on the film from its official FB page…

Celluloid Man is a tribute to an extraordinary man called Mr. P.K. Nair, the founder of the National Film Archive of India, and the guardian of Indian cinema. He built the Archive can by can in a country where the archiving of cinema is considered unimportant.

The fact that the Archive still has nine precious silent films of the 1700 silent films made in India, and that Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema, has a place in history today is because of Mr. Nair. He influenced generations of Indian filmmakers and showed us new worlds through the prism of cinema.

As Mr. Nair speaks, we see the history of Indian cinema unfold. What emerges is a portrait of a man so in love with cinema that even his family had to take a backseat to his obsession. Mr. Nair is not just the founder of the National Film Archive, but a living, breathing museum of cinema. Even in retirement, he chooses to stay across the road from the Archive watching over his legacy. The fact that India has a cinematic heritage at all is the singlehanded achievement of this man.

He is truly India’s Celluloid Man. There will be no one like him again.

Cinematography: Santosh Thundiyil, K.U. Mohanan, Avik Mukhopadhyay, P.S. Vinod, H.M. Ramachandra, R.V. Ramani, Vikas Sivaraman, Mahesh Aney, Kiran Deohans, Ranjan Palit, V.Gopinath

Editor: Irene Dhar Malik

Sound Design: Mohandas

Music: Ram Sampath

Titles/Online: Huzefa Lokhandwala, Santosh Sabherwal

Associate Director & Research: Manju Parvathy Iyer

Post Production: Pixion, Prime Focus. Processing: Kodak, EFX Prasad

– 35mm; English with Subtitles; Duration: 163 mins

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1; Dolby 5.1; Colour / B&W

To know more about the film, click here for its Facebook page.

Every decade Sight and Sound magazine does this poll to find out the Greatest films of all time. Filmmakers, critics, festival programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles are asked to vote for the poll. We are not sure about the criteria on the basis of which the people are asked to vote, but this year five Indian filmmakers are there in the voting list – Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Amit Dutta, Anurag Kashyap, Ashim Ahluwalia and Vidhu Vinod Chopra. And a strange thing caught our eyes – Raqs Media Collective has voted in Director’s category! Can anyone explain that?

Here’s the list of top 10 films that Indian directors voted for…

1. Adoor Gopalkrishnan

400 Blows, The – 1959 –  François Truffaut

Andrei Rublev – 1966 – Andrei Tarkovsky

Boy, The – 1969 – Oshima Nagisa

Pather Panchali – 1955 – Satyajit Ray

Pickpocket – 1959 – Robert Bresson

Puppetmaster, The – 1993 – Hsiao-hsien Hou

Rashomon – 1950 – Akira Kurosawa

Round-Up, The – 1966 – Miklos Jancso

strada, La – 1954 – Federico Fellini

Tokyo Story – 1953 – Ozu Yasujirô

2. Amit Dutta

Andrei Rublev – 1966 – Andrei Tarkovsky

Distant Thunder – 1973 – Satyajit Ray

Lancelot Du Lac – 1974 – Robert Bresson

Late Spring – 1949 – Ozu Yasujirô

My Ain Folk – 1973 – Bill Douglas

My American Uncle – 1980 – Alain Resnais

Arguments and a Story or Reason, Debate and a Tale – 1974 – Ritwik Ghatak

Rikyu – 1989 – Teshigahara Hiroshi

Saint Dnyaneshwar –     XXX – Vishnupant Govind Damle/Sheikh Fattelal

Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors – 1964 – Sergei Parajanov

3. Anurag Kashyap

Apocalypse Now – 1979 – Francis Ford Coppola

Bicycle Thieves, The – 1948 – Vittorio de Sica

Breathless – 1960 – Jean-Luc Godard

Fanny and Alexander – 1984 – Ingmar Bergman

Godfather: Part II, The – 1974 – Francis Ford Coppola

Head-On – 2003 – Fatih Akin

Peeping Tom – 1960 – Michael Powell

Pyaasa – 1957 – Guru Dutt

Taxi Driver – 1976 – Martin Scorsese

Trainspotting – 1995 – Danny Boyle

4. Ashim Ahluwalia

Adversary, The – 1971 – Satyajit Ray

Bogey-Man, The – 1980 – Govindan Aravindan

Close-Up – 1989 – Abbas Kiarostami

End of Summer, The – 1961 – Ozu Yasujirô

Golden Thread, The – 1965 – Ritwik Ghatak

Mirror – 1974 – Andrei Tarkovsky

Nanami: Inferno of First Love – 1968 – Hani Susumi

Pale Flower – 1964 – Shinoda Mashiro

Unsere Afrikareise – 1961 – Peter Kubelka

Veronika Voss – 1982 – Rainer Werner Fassbinder

5. Vidhu Vinod Chopra

8½ – 1963 – Federico Fellini

Breathless – 1960 – Jean-Luc Godard

Citizen Kane – 1941 – Orson Welles

Cloud-Capped Star, The – 1960 – Ritwik Ghatak

Emperor of the Mughals, The – 1960 – K. Asif

Lawrence of Arabia – 1962 – David Lean

Mother India – 1957 – Mehboob Khan

Pather Panchali – 1955 – Satyajit Ray

Pyaasa – 1957 – Guru Dutt

Rashomon – 1950 – Akira Kurosawa

– You can click on the filmmakers names to go their voting page and know more about the films.

– To know about the films that other Indian voters voted for, click here. You can go to the individual pages and scroll down to read their notes as well.

– To know more about the poll in details, click here and here.

The documentary film “Fire In Babylon” will have a theatrical release in India on 21st of Sept, 2012. It will be released under PVR Director’s Rare series.

If you haven’t heard about the docu, here’s the official release…

From the Oscar winning producers of One Day in September and The Last King of Scotland, comes the relentlessly entertaining cricket film FIRE IN BABYLON. The film charts the glorious supremacy of the West Indies cricket team throughout the late ‘70s and ‘80s.

A display of dominance at the highest level – longer than any team in the history of sport – in a game previously reserved for the privileged elite, their symbolic declaration was clear: people of colour will not be dictated to – on a cricket ground or in any other field of life.

Recounting the defiant and symbolic dominance of the West Indies cricket team throughout the late 1970s and 80s, FIRE IN BABYLON charts the events, which led to the rise of the West Indian cricketers becoming a fearsome and all conquering force to be reckoned with, striking a wonderfully defiant blow at the forces of white prejudice world-wide, inspiring a generation still struggling to emerge from racial discrimination.

FIRE IN BABYLON is told completely from a West Indian perspective, featuring a host of some of the legendary and revered players of the time and significant names from Caribbean culture including Sir Viv Richards, Michael Holding, Sir Clive Lloyd and Bunny Wailer, against a soundtrack of vibrant and classic music by the likes of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Gregory Issacs, Faithless and Horace Andy.

And here’s the new trailer of the film..

Click here to go to its FB page for more details and updates.

ROME FILM FESTIVAL
(FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DEL FILM DI ROMA)
Calls for Entries in all categories for 2012.

– Rome Film Festival now has a new artistic director, Marco Mueller (who used to head the Venice fest) and they are introducing some new categories and going for a makeover.  Scroll down for all the details.

DATES : The New redesigned 7th Rome Film Festival will take place from November 9 – 17, 2012 and will be a ‘World Premiere’ festival with a selection of around 60 world premieres. There will also be a focus on new trends in contemporary cinema in a New Competition section called Cinema XXI (21st-century cinema)

 – NEW SECTION : Cinema XXI (21st-century Cinema) focuses on works that “reflect the continuous reinvention of cinema on the contemporary visual scene,” and will host a competition showing feature films, medium-length features, and short films, for a maximum of fifteen films.

– The Official Selection is composed of an International Competition, a choice of films Out of Competition, and two additional competitive showcases: CinemaXXI (21st-century Cinema) and Perspectives Italy.

– The Rome Film festival will give out more than 12 awards for World Cinema.

 – The 7th Rome Film Festival is now open for Entries.

Eligibility Criteria: All film submissions must be recent productions completed not prior to November 30th, 2011, and they must not have been presented in any other format or length, not even as works-in-progress, for submission to previous editions of the Festival. Under no circumstances may films that have had prior public screenings be presented at the Rome Film Festival. Exceptions may be made only for films presented exclusively in their own country of origin. Works previously presented in competition or out of competition at other international festivals or shown on the Internet will not be considered for selection.

 – To submit a film to the selection, one has to fill out a pre-selection entry form on the official festival website.

– The preview DVDs should be sent to Deepti DCunha, who continues as the India Consultant to Artistic Director, Marco Mueller for the 7th Rome Film Festival.

– The DVDs should reach her before 1st September, 2012. Filmmakers with films in post-production are requested to contact Deepti at the address below.

– The festival’s Director Marco Mueller will be visiting India in September for the final selection of films.

– All submissions (duly subtitled in English) should be sent to the contact details given below before the 1st of September.

Name & Address: Deepti DCunha. 23 Gautam Niwas, 7 Bungalows. Andheri West, Mumbai 400 053. India

Email: deepti.dcunha@gmail.com or d.dcunha@romacinemafest.org

WEBSITE : For complete rules and regulations, you can visit the Festival website at www.romacinemafest.it