India’s first 2D animated film is a 100 minute feature on the life of Lord Hanuman. With 40 individual characters and over 200,000 individual images, the film has been made over two years involving 250 cell-animation artists. The brainchild of VG Samant who pioneered the animation genre in India, it has music by Tapas Relia. The background music has been scored by Taufique Qureshi, Ustad Zakir Hussain and Sivamani. A special song and video on Hanuman will have all the leading playback singers of India lending their voices. The film will be dubbed in American-English for an international release and in Hindi for theatres in India. It has already found a place in the Limca Book Of Records as India’s first indigenous animation film.
Kisna for Cannes, Taal for Chicago
The English version of Subhash Ghai’s Kisna will be showcased in the ‘Market’ section at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14 and 17. Produced under Mukta Arts Ltd., the Hindi version was released worldwide in January 2005. Designed to suit the international audiences the length of the English version has been trimmed down to an hour and 35 minutes. Starring Vivek Oberoi and debutantes Isha Shravani and British actor Antonia Bernath, the film’s music has been composed by A R Rahman and Ismail Darbar.
Ghai’s Taal was screened at the Chicago Film Festival in the ‘Most Overlooked Films’ section. Noted film critic Roger Ebert selects a total of 12 films that represent a cross-section of important cinematic works ‘overlooked’ by audiences, critics and distributors. Taal, one of 12 films screened this year, was shown on April 24, followed by an interactive session with the producer-director and Roger Ebert. Ghai also addressed about 400 students on the changing trends in Bollywood. Taal was released in 1999 and celebrated a golden jubliee run. It stars Anil Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai and Akshaye Khanna.
Javed Akhtar’s Tarkash in Gujarati
Image Publications has organised a programme at Mumbai’s Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan on April 30 when the Gujarati translation of Javed Akhtar’s collection of Urdu poems Tarkash will be released. Known poet Dr. Raeesh Maniar has translated the poems in Gujarati. The book has Akhtar’s nazms and ghazals in Hindi and Gujarati. A musical, Main Aur Meri Tanhai will also be presented on the occasion, featuring Akhtar’s famous film songs that will be sung by Mitali Mukherjee, Dhanshri Pandit, Poroma and Parthiv Gohil. The programme will be compered by Gujarati poet Dilip Rawal.
First Indo-Afghan film in English and Persian
A 30-member Indian unit of technicians left for Afghanistan where the very first Indo-Afghanistan feature film, Rahimi Films International’s Spring Of Hope in English and Persian, is being shot in a start-to-finish schedule. Breathtaking war sequences are being shot on a massive scale on actual locations with a full battalion of 500 armed soldiers of the Afghan army, war tanks, aroured vehicles, helicopters and fighter planes. Spring Of Hope is a love story set against the backdrop of strife-torn Afghanistan. Post-production will commence in India in the second week of May. The film made by Hashmat Khan is being made in Dolby Digital format. It will be released in August 2005 with a grand premiere on Kabul.
10th Broadcast Asia 2005 in Singapore
Singapore Exhibition Services will organise its 10th Broadcast Asia 2005 International Conference between June 14 and 17 at SingaporeExpo. Geared to meet the demands of the Indian film industry, the largest in the world with over 1200 movies released annually, the conference will gather over 800 international companies this year for the event, which will focus on media content creation, management and delivery. In keeping with the times and evolution of the broadcast and electronic media industry, this year’s show will highlight computer graphics, animation and content creation space in its segment ComGraphics and Animation 2005. Set to offer a comprehensive platform for India to secure its latest broadcast technologies and solutions to meet the growth of the media industry, the show promises to connect exhibitors and visitors, keepign them updated with the latest developments in the electronic media industry.
Digital Intermediate Tour in India
Digital Intermediate (DI) is the new buzz word in the Hindi film industry. You can experience the revolution that this technology has brought about at the Digital Intermediate Tour that travels across six countries in the Asia-Pacific including India. First hand accounts of DI that more and more films are adopting, will be presented by Steven Poster, leading Director of Photography (former President of the American Cinematographer Society), Philippe Reinaudo from Eclair Laboratories, Paris, and Jean-Francois Panisset from Sony Imageworks Pictures, Los Angeles. Also sharing his experience on the DI process used in Black is the film’s Director of Photography, Ravi K Chandran.
Protests against Rin ad
The Catholic Secular Forum has taken strong exception to Amitabh Bachchan’s Rin Advanced detergent ad that has him dressed in a shabby cassock asking a student how he manages to keep his clothes so white. The general secretary of the Forum Joseph Dias has threatened to hold demonstrations outside the houses of the superstar and Hindustani Lever Ltd., if the ad is not withdrawn immediately.