14th July 2007
After I had left the theatre a lot of volunteers including Wiebke the very efficient Artistic Director of the festival came and met me and ensured not to worry… and i will have a show no matter what… nothet of their volunteer Jessica Cope with her calm and composed demeanour just said it all and assured me that they will do anything for but will ensure that I have a screening…
I didnt feel like going inside the metropol as I knew i couldnt have been able to concentrate… instead I decided to make use of the happy hours… Marie Kaplan has this knack for making superb drinks… I hit the bar… and i hit it till Barbara and Steve made it back to me.
I think the happiness of having Steve come all the way from Wolverhampton just to see my short film and our subsequent first meeting also didn’t make me feel bad about the screening… so i decided not to let it affect me and instead enjoy the moment with Barbara and Steve… I was meeting Steve for the first time, So along with barbara, Steve and Lisa one of our friends there we decided to give Bombay Dub Orchestra a skip and instead sit and chat somewhere over some more drinks… which was later follwed by a superb dinner and more drinks, and more drinks after the dinner till we saw Ketan and Paromita returning back to the hotel around two am, where we had some more drinks for the road…
Steve came along to my hotel, he had just that night to stay in Germany, as he was scehduled to leave the next day back home. But the evening lasted till four thorty in the morning till our man left for his own hotel… thus making me think all over again about the screening of my short film…
The next days screening was a little early so had to catch up on sleep and reach the venue to see what was happening with regards to the projection lens.
I reached Metropol at around eleven thirty twelve and got caught of one of the volunteers. Between Suraj a german Indian who works a cop there came along and told me that he felt bad, and Julia had gone on some three four hours drive just to acquire the lens for my film. I immediately asked him to call her up as i expressed my wish to speak to her personally… tring tring… there I get Julia my saviour online… i speak to her and she just tells me Surendra not to worry I am carrying your stuff with me and i should be there by one….
I was relieved as i kept waiting for her to arrive as i wanted to check the film projection as this time i didnt want to take any chance… Between Rajnesh Domalpally of Vanaja came and told me that he was really curious to know as to what happens to the characters in the end…
John Jeffcoat and Josh Hamilton couldn’t believe that the cutting of the dead body shot was real… Josh too was very vocal about the film subject… though it mattered a lot to me, I only wish that I had a smooth running yesterday. I requested them to come and see my film once again today…
The lens arrived and the first thing I did along with Wiebke and the projectionist was to check it this time… we did and everything was fine.
The screening started and I was happy to see most of the guests and other cine lovers attending the show… as they say whatever happens happens for the best… I ecountered Jessica again and she just had a cool smile which said boss, relax and hv fun….
I had my fingers crossed and the first film was again to be mine… the auditorium had a decent attendance and the film began…. every frame that was projected on screen had me on the edge, Barbara was again on my left, as I missed my friend Steve on the right… Fifteen minutes and the film finally went of well… I was a happy man.
John, Josh, Rajat, Meenal, Paromita, Ketan Anand, Vinod Ganatra, Shekhar Das, Aniruddha Roy Chaudhury, Rita rani, Nitin Shinghal, Pooja Kumar, Arun Vaidyanathan, Uma Da Cunha, Kartik the vocalist and Srinivas the Tabla player from Bombay Dub Orchestra, Chandu Shekhars producers, and most of the volunteers were present including the directors of Gandhi at the Bat… I had had my day… after the screening everybody came and shared their happiness for me… It was so cool…. Rajnesh Domalpally couldnt make it as he was busy with various TV channels taking his interview…
Later on I went to see Aniruddha roy Chaudhury’s Anuranan – A Resonance which was competing in the feature film section.
So this was also the day the festival people took us for a special dinner…
The next day and the final day was the most busiest of all as we had four screenings lined up… The first and the most important of all was Ketans documentary film and his tribute to his fathers 50 years of work in the Hindi Film Industry called the ‘The Poetics of Films’ which took us on a journey of knowing a man a director called Chetan Anand….
It was follwed by the imediate shift from this theatre to second screen where Paromita’s Documentary Q2P was played… we finished that, and again moved to Screen one to see Vinod Ganatra’s children film called ‘Luka Chupi’. That film got over and immediately after an hours or so break we had the award ceremony followed by the closing film ‘Vanaja’ and Q & A session with Rajnesh.
The q & a was again followed by the closing ceremony party which was attended by all… and it was such a pleasure especially to see all the volunteers including Wiebke let their hair down…
The next morning was our flight back home, and i couldnt believe that five days had passed by and i was ready to go… it was happy and a sad moment. Happy because the volunteers everybody havent mentioned Simona and Sweniya before… but they all had put a wonderful and a memorable show together and sad because it was coming to an end.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
For those who are cursed with bad luck on Friday the 13th, there is hope as Saturday the 14th proves to be lucky!
Ask Surya, he
I saw
ahh Surya bhaiya ! am so happy for u seeing u going places with ur film
The 7th Karachi International Film Festival(KaraFilm Fest)starts from 15th november, any plans? any submissions? Or anyone u know who is coming here from India?
Best of luck, keep rocking
Regards.