IFFLA 2007 : The Winners
Best Feature
Jury Award: Valley Of Flowers
Audience Choice Award: Outsourced
Best Documentary
Jury Award: Q2P
Audience Choice Award: Divided We Fall - Americans in the Aftermath
Best Short Film
Jury Award: Tea Break
Audience Choice Award: Monsoon
Honorary Mentions
Vanaja (feature)
Printed Rainbow (Shorts)
From the above the talk of the town was on the award given to one movie - the jury award for “Valley of Flowers”… it seemed like the jury had gone bonkers.
In striker’s words VOF was pure visual masturbation. The top three contenders for the jury award in the best feature cateogory, for many in the festival were Vanaja, Kya Tum Ho? and Outsourced. A few were shocked on the final result, while others had their eyebrows pointing to the ceiling with the “have seen this happening a gazillion times before”.
No doubt VOF has captured Ladakh like never before in a feature. It was a mesmerizing experience. But sadly the movie wasn’t working for me. I still prefer Pan Nalin’s (the director) earlier works - Ayurveda (a documentary) and Samsara (feature).
In general a few opined in private that the entries last year at IFFLA were much better than the ones of this year. Still there is a tremendous positive look for next year. I find this festival growing bigger and better in it’s reach, reaction and support from the people living in US. And specially the local population of Los Angeles, Orange County and the rest of California.
The experience is one for keeps… for a life time. Though in that moment you may not think much about it, but [--- (mistaken identity please skip)when Philip Seymour Hoffman is sitting close to you watching Vanaja, and then a few hours later standing behind you, patiently waiting for his turn at the buffet table ----]… Or for that matter Quentin Tarantino sipping his beer in the coffee shop while energetically going “FUCK MAN I LOVED KAANTE” - can make the ground slip from below your feet. Or even the freaking moment where Anurag and I walked on stage to present Missed Call (other PFCites had different opinion on the movie) and engaged in leg pulling and Anurag’s good word about the movie.
But in the end it was all about movies. Commercial. Non-commercial. Independent. And whatever we may have out there. Movies. No groupism, No drawing the lines around, No branding (hear hear)… just movies.
And thanks to those PFC authors who made it to the festival… Anuj Nijhawan, Striker, Ravi Kalaga (where the bleep is your coverage on Loins of Punjab presents?), Om, t!, Saurabh Dixit (he’s got a hell of a video interview with Christina - the one person carrying the Indian movies banner higher and higher in Hollywood land), Varun, Mainak, and of course the one who made it easy for all of us at the festival - Vijay, along with two movie mavericks from India who surprised everyone at the festival by landing there on the second day - Anurag Kashyap and Nishikant Kamat.
To all the above I’m sending a bill that includes charges for trashing my place for the whole week… 
… oh ok, a 99% discount for giving me one hell of an experience.
Coming up… more individual author experiences at the festival, video interviews, pictures with famous personalities along with sound bytes… and much much more… the authors are still recuperating from hectic week… they’ll be posting as soon as they are able to get out of their beds.
Exclusive, IFFLA 2007, Movie Blog
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Oz, sorry to disappoint you but the man sitting there watching Vanaja and standing in the queue behind you was not Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He was Alec Boehm, director of Gandhi At The Bat, who looks strikingly similar to PSH.
This one is the mistaken identity incident of the year for IFFLA. We have one every year. Last year, the buzz was that Rabbi Shergill was going to attend and also perform at opening night. We had screened his video “Bulla Ki Jaana” in the shorts program. Rabbi couldn’t attend however.
Now there was this man called Manmeet Singh, producer of one of our docs called “Widow Colony” who bore a striking resemblance to Rabbi. Nishikant hung out with him for 3 days and Manmeet had great things to say about Dombivli Fast. You should have seen the expression on Nishi’s face when I finally broke it to him one night that he was not hanging out with Rabbi Shergill.
Told u Oz that he was not phillip seymour I asked him he said he gets that reaction quite often it seems.
oz, woops.. forgot to tell you that i got a look at our alleged friend PSH’s filmmaker pass, and it wasn’t PSH, but indeed alec boehm. the striking resemblance was… um.. er.. for lack of better words.. striking!
vijay, the DJ at sunday night’s afterparty.. tej (can’t remember his last name).. looked a lot like rabbi too!
OM has sent his and varun’s pic with tarantino to rediff upon my insistence
main jaanta tha main jaanta tha main jaanta tha ~X( blame anurag for convincing me that he was PSH… now don’t tell me Tarantino was not Tarantino but his body double? huh?
Tarantino was tarantino. He’s always at the ArcLight every weekend watching all the movies there. Which is why nobody really cares if he’s around. So you guys made him very very happy by going up to him and taking pictures with him.
As for Anurag convincing you, I’m sure woh toh teri bas le raha tha.
hmm…:-w I think it was the “badla” (hinglish: revenge of the nerds) of what I did on stage at Missed Call… anurag… tujhe toh main mumbai aake Subhash K. Jha ke saath partnership karke dekh loonga…
(hinglish: oz come to mumbai, shake hands with one Mr. Subhash K. Jha and then see Anurag)
Tarantino was awesome. he was so open for a conversation. Funny that i met him in the restroom. I am like peeing and this guy 6 feet something stands beside me….is he Tarantino? No he cant pee here…Excuse me are you tarantino…he smiles and says yeah…damn it i cannot shake his hands…
LMAO @ Tarantino cant pee here
Thanks to Vijay, Oz and most of all… to PFC for the fun and great experince we had at IFFLA. It was Mind blowing..
@oz..working on the interviews and photographs.. Do we have a common place where we can upload our pics?
I want to personally thank the entire PFC gang who attended the festival. You guys and gal brought a lot of great energy to the atmosphere, and I speak for all our staff members as well who interacted with you that it was an absolute pleasure having you there.
I also want to particularly congratulate Srinivas Sundarrajan, (a PFC reader/commentator and now author) director of “Tea Break” on winning the Jury Prize for Best Short Film. I gave him an extremely hard time right through the 6 days for giving me a DVD transfer of his film to screen instead of a high quality Beta one. The jury specifically pointed out that among all the films they saw, they felt Srinivas was the one to watch out for the future and were very impressed by his sense of storytelling.
Oh and “Tea Break” also ranked no. 3 in the Audience Choice ratings.
Srinivas has an interesting piece on his conversation w/ Tarantino. I hope he gets the time to upload it before his flight back to India.
Hey,
I know you guys had a wonderful time at IFFLA…it is apparent from all the posts about the event. I am from Washington DC. It seems most of these events either take place in New York or in Cali. Any chance of it coming to the capital.???
nitin, dc has pretty big film festivals of its own.. check out the DC int’l film festival - filmfestdc.org - and also the dc independent film festival - dciff.org.. there’s also the rosebud film festival which has been going strong since 1990 - rosebudact.org
if you want some asian flavor to your festivals, there’s also saltaf.org and apafilm.org
Sweet…..thanks a bunch striker
oz,
can u tell me how i can become a member of PFC?….i have lots of experiences to share…believe me it will make some interesting reading.
raaj
Raaj, go to “contact” and write a mail to oz. teh contact button is near teh website’s name.
Yeah. A mail to OZ always works
:)>-
That was a nice round-up, Oz. Thanx to all the guys who covered IFFLA for us.
Last but not the least, congrats to Srinivas!
Taking clue from last years IFFLA winners & various posts on pfc, I strongly feel Dombivali fast and the man behind it, are getting too much and too unnecessary adulation. No doubt it