IFFLA 2007 : Day 3 : It’s raining shorts!
Chuck the lazy bones. Trash the “Oh, maybe a few years from now” thoughts. Screw the “impossible” misbeliefs. Pickup up your handicam and just shoot it. From 8 minutes to 20 minutes shorts.
An amazing 90 minutes that spanned about 6 shorts last night.
Loved “Shanu Taxi” – a story about a taxi driver who thinks up various business plans based around the cell phone forgotten by his ride. How can you squeeze such a beautiful story that has a start, middle and an end in 15 minutes? You’ve got to see this to believe it.
And what can I say about a mere 21 year old guy from Bombay who’s flown all the way here. Reason? His short film “Tea Break” was selected at IFFLA. Dead tired as I squeezed myself to watch this one. At the end of the 10 minutes, you feel rejuvenated. It’s Srinivas S’s first film, though he was the assistant director for “The Pool” which won big at Sundance earlier this year. Loved the movie, keeping in my mind, that it was his first independent project. The black and white tone, the shots, the cuts… the script was fine though there were quite a few shortfalls, but you tend to let them go seeing the energy, earnestness and love for cinema in this young lad from Aamchi Mumbai. I’ve invited him to write on PFC. He could have been writing much sooner had I read his emails he’s been shooting me asking me to let him on PFC… my bad 
“Undisputed” by Vikramaditya Motwane is not only fun, but the lead actor Rishi Prasad seems to have worked real hard to act “bad” – loved how Prasad portrayed the role of a bad actor who shares the same name as that of Bollywood star Akshay Kumar. Motwane shows a lot of promise, sorry make that, “tremendous” promise as a film maker. Am eagerly awaiting his first feature.
Day 4 is about to begin and I hope I can squeeze in to see “Outsource”. Then it’s “Missed Call” which PFC will present. Under tremendous pressure. They want me to walk on stage and talk about PFC. Said no. Vijay and the gang is adamant.
Flash: Srinivas just met Tarantino here… his first post will be on the meeting.
Off to the first movie of the evening. You guys have a great weekend!
Tags: IFFLA 2007
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
hey thats encouraging enough….UTHAO CAMERA and SHOOT andola to start……
Have fun hosting AK and NK…..Oz….bloody going green in my face here….
Srinivas ka Tea Break….koi link hai use film ka?????
vb, kk.. u guys had fun with ak on sets of “no smoking”.. now time for PFC-USA to have some fun :D hanging out with all of PFC was a blast so far.. can’t wait for day 5 (day 2 for me). i missed oz’s opening presentation.. but at least we were all able to have some fun afterwards.. seeing tarantino in person.. just hanging out at arclight cinemas.. was just plain weird.. but that’s hollywood!! wish i had my copy of “rebels in the backlot”.. would’ve loved to have him sign it for me.
Hey guys, Oz, Vijay, Striker and all… yaar how would others gain access to watch some of these films? Tea Break, Shanu Taxi and of course “Undisputed” sound like must-see shorts.
Plus all the talk around “Missed Call” and “Outsourced” has created a lot of interest in watching these films.
I’m not alone, I have a bunch of friends here (Vancouver) who are interested in seeing these films. We were even joking around about arranging an Indian Film Fest for Vancouver just to bring these films/filmmakers out here…
So yeah, is there a way (if not now but down the road) we could access these films (DVD, Online, in a theatre near me…)
Tony, I could put you in touch with the organizers of IFFLA who can pass on the contacts of these film makers. Vijay will be more than happy to help you out if you have something constructive in hand. You could then approach the makers with your festival idea.
If you are serious about organizing a festival there, let’s talk. As for DVD copies of the film, if you look at the film program on www.indianfilmfestival.org, you will find at the bottom of each film information page, a Print Source contact. Often that is the contact info for the filmmakers as well. You can contact them directly to see how you can obtain a DVD copy of the film. Posting the films online is something we advise filmmakers from doing because then the film becomes available globally, negating its premiere status for most other festivals they can travel to. Also most of the shorts and docs don’t have music licenses for online usage.
CLARIFICATION: Posting the films online is something we advise AGAINST for reasons mentioned.
Well quite honestly we were just talking about a festival out there, so nothing close to any constructive planning… I’m not sure how to even begin putting something like this together (on that scale). It’s good to know that there are people like yourself out there Vijay, if anything constructive can be worked out on our end then I’ll definately be turning to you for help. Thanks man.
As for the films, I had seen the programs section of the IFFLA website but nothing about how to access the films. I will contact the filmmakers directly and see what can be arranged… thanks for the tips…