The Warlords, a Chinese flick by filmmaker Peter Chan will open the fest, which will be held at Kala Academy and the Entertainment Society of Goa Complex on the scenic banks of the river Mandovi in North Goa. The Iranian film The Song Of The Sparrows directed by Majid Majidi will be the closing film for the festival, director of Film Festivals (DFF) S M Khan said. Films from Asia, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa will be screened in the competition section, which will be judged by a jury headed by noted Hong Kong film director Peter Chan, Khan said. Other jury members include Marco Muller (Venice), Niki Karimi (Iran), Lav Diaz (Singapore) and Tabassum Hashmi (India), he said.

The Festival was inaugurated by veteran actress Rekha while Telugu actress Illina DCruz was the special guest for the opening ceremony scheduled at the Kala Academy. Union minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Anand Sharma, Goa Governor S S Sidhu and Goa Chief Minister Digamber Kamat were among the dignitaries present on the occasion.
Agencies

Inadequate publicity led Summer 2007 to bomb at b-o: Director
Summer 2007, on farmer suicides selected to be shown in the Panorama Section of the upcoming International Film Festival of India, at Goa, bombed at the box-office because it had not been promoted sufficiently, says director Suhail Tatari. “We knew we made a good film. But the film was not promoted well. I don’t think many people have even seen it. The film’s selection at IFFI is good news. The distributors gave it a disastrous release of only 338 shows pan India. And the worst part was that the film was promoted as if it were a romantic film,” says Tatari. Starring newcomers Sikander and Yuvika Choudhury, other cast members include Gul Panag, Arjan Bajwa and Alekh Sangal. “Both Sikandar Kher and Yuvika gave very good performances. I would not have regretted if the film was released all over India on the same lines as other films. Seeing the good show of some small budget films, I can say that there is a large audience for these kind of films,” Tatari adds.

At the IFFI, the film will compete with hit films such as Neeraj Pandey’s A Wednesday, Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar and Aamir Khan’s much-appreciated Taare Zameen Par. Producer Atul Pandey says, “I am very happy that the film got nominated at such a prestigious platform and believe it was the right thing to do. There are many people in the industry who don’t understand good cinema. Promotion of the film on television and print was done as if it were a love story,” he adds. The film is about five medical students whose lives take a turn after landing up in villages of Maharashtra. Their rural posting turns into a soul-searching journey where they are forced to confront their own apathy and fears.
PTI

Elizabeth director inspired by tale of cockroaches
Switching from 16th-century queens to tiny urban pests may be difficult for some filmmakers but not for Indian director Shekhar Kapur. Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the sequel to his Oscar-nominated period film Elizabeth, opened in Indian cinemas on Friday but Kapur is already hard at work on his next film, A Suitable Cockroach. “It’s an animation film based on some characters and a story I have created,” Kapur said on the sidelines of the 38th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), which kicked off over the weekend close to the golden beaches of Goa.

Kapur is wary of giving details, saying, “I can’t keep giving away my stories, someone will copy it.” But media reports suggest the film is set in the future when the common household insect may be the only living organism on the planet. Top Bollywood composer A R Rahman has been roped in to score the music for the film. Kapur said he is yet to finish writing his other film Paani (Water), a project announced earlier. Paani is about a time when water gets completely privatised,” the 61-year-old filmmaker, said explaining why he had stopped buying bottled water.“The environmental cost of drinking bottled water is huge.”