9th Indian Film Festival Of Bhubaneswar To Start From February 14
The 9th Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar (IFFB) will begin in the city on February 14 by the Film Society of Bhubaneswar (FSB). More than 40 award-winning and critically acclaimed movies are to be screened from February 14 to 20. The festival is being held at Idcol Auditorium by Film Society of Bhubaneswar (FSB) in association with Kerala State Chalachitra Academy and National Film Archives
The festival will focus on contemporary Indian Cinema and screen films of different regions that have not been released officially on any platform.
“Every year, remarkable films are made in various Indian languages. They together give the identity of Indian cinema. The cinema that we generally get to see in theatres (generally products of film industries of Mumbai or South India) is only a small part of the bigger picture,” pointed out FSB secretary Subrat Behura. The seven-day festival will be featuring around thirty outstanding contemporary works of cinema in the languages of Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Manipuri, Khasi and Odia, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil, Marathi and Hindi and Punjabi.
There will be a retrospective of noted Malayalam film maker G Aravindan, one of the great directors of Indian Cinema. He was one of the pioneers of Parallel Cinema in Malayalam and is considered as one of the greatest filmmakers in India. He was known for his unorthodox way of filmmaking; he changed his cinematic forms consistently and experimented in storytelling without regular narrative styles. Before venturing into the film field, he was an established cartoonist. He had also worked with documentaries and theatre. He also occasionally directed music for other filmmakers. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of Padma Shri in 1990
Internationally-acclaimed filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli will grace the festival as chief guest. Known internationally for his works, Kasaravalli has garnered fourteen National Film Awards, including four Best Feature Films; Ghatashraddha (1977), Tabarana Kathe (1986), Thaayi Saheba (1997) and Dweepa (2002). In 2011, he was awarded Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award by Government of India. There will be workshops and master classes for students with noted film makers.
The film festival hopes to encourage young filmmakers to work from the eastern part of the country by providing mentoring opportunities with master filmmakers, said actor and producer Swostik Choudhury.
