The 40th International Film Festival (IFFI) of India gets underway from November 23 in Goa. This 11-day extravaganza is the biggest annual film event in South Asia. In a major initiative to promote the festival, the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), has introduced a worldwide contest called Top 20 of Indian Cinema. Run on a specially-created website, the participants can vote from November 10 to 29 for what they think are the top 20 Indian films over the years. This first-of-its-kind contest was launched by the Chief Minister of Goa, Digambar Kamat on November 10 in Mumbai.
"The objective of the ESG is to help cultivate Goa into a world-class international centre, and to work towards building a global visibility and branding for the festival," he said.
The contest is the brainchild of Manoj Srivastava, CEO of ESG. And the idea was to involve the whole country into rating the top feature films of Indian cinema in the past 96 years. "Next year, we will introduce the top T20 actors, the year after the T20 actresses and then the directors," said Srivastava.
The list sent in by the participants should match the 20 choices received from 10 specially-appointed film directors and film critics. The 20 participants whose choices match with the master choice will be declared the winners.
The grand finale will take place in Goa on November 30, where prizes will be awarded to the first 20 correct entries. They will be invited to Goa to attend the 40th International Film Festival.
Guest of Honour Dev Anand flagged off the contest, while other guests included film directors Ananth Mahadevan, Nagesh Kukunoor, actors Ranjeet, Jagdeep, Mita Vashist and Divya Dutta besides others.
