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Hum Panchhi Ek Dal Ke. No, not the 1957 film or the 2006 one. It is a short film made this year. Just 9 minutes long, dialogue less, in colour & B&W. Directed by Manoj Srivastava, who is known more in his avatar of a Deputy Director with the Directorate of Film Festivals of Government of India in Delhi, it was one of the Indian films that were entered in the Short Film Corner section of the Cannes Film Festival this year. It was the only Indian film in the shortlist of 14 that were in the competition within the segment. The Short Film Corner section was started five years ago, to encourage filmmakers to create interesting work, and the buzz is that it could in the near future be hived off as a completely separate stand-alone festival. The prize money of Euro 10,000 and an offer from Fonds …

I was surprised the other day when I came upon a headline in the New Indian Express (Chennai edition dated Saturday May 17 2008 11:48 IST) which said ‘Cannes honour for Billa’.
It said “A year after Veyil, the Tamil movie directed by Vasantha Balan, was officially nominated to the Cannes Film Festival; yet another Tamil movie makes it to the Mecca of movie makers.” (Veyvil was in Cinema du Monde, a special side attraction at the festival last year)
Wow! that’s fantastic, I thought, it must have been a last minute addition as I had gone through the official list of this year’s selection and seen no sign of a film from India.
“A superhit film in India already, Billa will now earn international acclaim by being screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival as well. It will be screened …

There are five Indian films in one of the sections of Cannes this time, after all. All in the Short Film Corner section, which is one of the side-bar sections of the festival.

This, apart from Vijay Anand’s Guide which is being screened in the Classic section.

The five films, to be screened in the Short Film Corner section. are Hum Panchhi Ek Daal Ke (Of Haves and Havenots, 9 mins) in the Experimental Documentary sub-section, written & directed by Manoj Srivastava (currently a deputy director with the Directorate of Film Festivals in New Delhi), In the Land of the Nagas (30:05 mins) in the Documentary sub-setion, directed by Jaishankar Singh, Akela (Alone, 7:13 mins) in the experimental fiction sub-section (It’s an India-France-Singapore co-production), directed by Alka Mehta, Retirement (5:30 mins) by Tushar Joshi, and Viva Sunita! (3:45 mins) by Amitabh Sinha and Lolita Sarkar, in the fiction sub-section.

The Cannes …

“India embraces the cinema of the whole world…In a future issue, I shall show why India is the creation of the whole world.”
Jean-Luc Godard

It has been 14 long years since an Indian Film has made the Competition Selection of the Cannes International Film Festival. And that particular Competition Selection, Shaji Karun’s second feature Swaham (1994), happens to be the only instance for the decade of the 90s. Around the time, some of Shaji Karun’s well wishers, prompted by Andrew Robinson’s comparison of the debut features, pompously declared that “there are only two Indian films - Pather Panchali (1955) & Piravi (1988). Period.” What is common to both the films, & the probable reason for the latter film’s exaltation, is a certain institution that has consistently, for the last six decades, managed to play world cinema’s official conscience-keeper & harbinger of the evolution of cinema itself - the Cannes International …

It’s Cannes time again. And it is time for some of our filmmakers to go and screen their films in the “market”, on space and time bought against hefty sums, outside the festival’s official sections, and then come back and claim through their PR companies – and the ‘anything goes’ media is only too happy to reproduce these claims – that their films have been “screened at Cannes”. (Closer home: would anyone claim that his or her film has been screened at IFFI if it is screened at the market section? The glamour of Cannes is to blame, I guess!)

It is these claims that prompted me to go to the Cannes website archive two years ago, and prepare an exhaustive list of all Indian films screened (in any official section) in Cannes since its first edition. Here it goes – in alphabetical order, and updating for 2007 & 2008 …

Some 63-64 years ago late Chetan Anand had won the Grand Prix award at Cannes Film festival and had become the first Indian film maker to get this honour and now it’s the turn of his younger brother, the ever green star Dev Anand, to attend Cannes, where his most outstanding film “Guide” has been selected in the section of classic films.

That is a good news as now there is a curiosity about Indian films in other countries and Guide represents the best of Hindi cinema. Guide suggests that Hindi cinema has been different than the cinema existing in other parts of the world. Hindi cinema can combine good literature and high class music to make a wonderful film like Guide.

As per the news, Cannes festival has invited Dev Saab to showcase his classic film Guide.

Hearty congratulations to Dev Saab !!!!

Evergreen actor …