Shah Rukh, Kamal Haasan to grace MAMI fest inaugural


By MSM Desai

Producer GP Sippy has been chosen for this year’s life-time achievement award instituted by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) which will be given away by Shah Rukh Khan at the inaugural ceremony of the third International Film Festival on November 23 at the Shanmukhananda Hall, Mumbai.

Kamal Haasan will inaugurate the film festival while chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh will preside.

Addressing a press conference on November 11, Amit Khanna, one of the trustees, said the opening film will be Ang lee’s Crouching Tiger. During the week-long fest, 90 films in different sections will be shown. However, the closing ceremony will be held at Nehru Centre Auditorium on November 30 with the screening of MF Hussain’s much-awaited film, Gaja Gamini, starring Madhuri Dixit.

Govind Swaroop, secretary of the Ministry of Social Welfare, which is funding the fest, assured pressfolk that the MAMI film festival would be a regular feature every year, with better films being screened.

Kiran Shantaram, secretary of MAMI, said that during the seven-day festival, there would be 12 hours of film-viewing every day at three theatres, NCPA, YB Chavan and Little Theatre at NCPA. Besides World Cinema section, Retrospective and Mumbai film industry contribution to Indian cinema, three more sections will be introduced this year, including Asian Panorama, Focus on Director and Focus on one country. This year Focus on Director is on two Oscar-winning directors, Jiri Menzel (Czech) and Istvan Szabo (Hungary) who have won Oscars for their films, Closely Guarded Trains and Mephisto, respectively.
While last year, the fest had a theme of Romance, Mumbai Style, this year the focus is on Women’s Voice. The films selected are the ones where the woman protogonist rebels against the system, from Mehboob Khan’s Aurat to Prakash Jha’s Mrityudand.

Focus on A country this year, will be on Japan in which five Japanese films made in the 90s will be screened.
Over 2,500 delegates from film industry, film socieites, video and ad world and cultural organisations are expected to participate. Among them are Rituparna Ghosh, Aparna Sen, MT Vasudevan Nair, Aruna Vasudev and Preeti Chandrakant. Foreign guests will include Jean Phillipe Toussaint (France), Alan Ross (France), Jerzy Hoffman (Poland), Jiri Menzel (Czech), Mila Radova (Czech), Itzakh Rubin (Isreal) and Yves Thoraval (France).

The total budget of the festival is expected to be in the vicinity of Rs 1 crore, said Govind Swaroop. Besides the Government of Maharashtra, other sponsors include Sony Max, Godrej, Air India, Jet Airways, Grand Hotel, Bright Advertising and RNK Travels.

In the Women’s Voice section, Bandini, Guide, Seeta Aur Geeta, Damini, Arth, Bhoomika, Aurat, Rudali and Mrityudand will be screened.

In Film India Worldwide, Wings of Hope (Raj Basu), Nightfall (Gwyneth Gibby), My Little Devil (Gopi Desai), Bhavander (Jagmohan Mundra), Bombay Eunuch, The Laughing Club of Bombay- Video (Mira Nair), and Jesus Goes to India (Preeti Chandrakant) will be shown.

While five films from UK and three from the USA are to be screened during the fete in the World Cinema section, other countries represented include Argentina, Belgium, France, Germany, Isreal, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Italy and Iran.

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