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The Indian Panorama for the 38th IFFI (Goa, Nov 23-Dec 3) has been just announced.

Lenin Rajendran’s “Ratri Mazha” (Night Rain) in Malayalam and Samir Chanda’s “Ek Nadir Galpo” (Story of a River) will represent India in the Asian-African-Latin American Competition section. The Panorama section will open with another Malayalam film, Shyamaprasad’s “Ore Kadal”.

The other films in Indian Panorama are B S Lingadevaru’s “Kada Beladingalu”, P R Ramdas Naidu’s “Moggina Jade” K Shivarudraiah’s “Daatu” (all Kannada), Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s “Naalu Pennungal”, Renjith’s “Kayyoppu”,
Babu Thiruvalla’s “Thaniye” (all Malayalam), Bhavna Talwar’s “Dharm”, Sameer Hanchate’s “Gafla” (both Hindi), Sanib Sabhapandit’s “Jaatingaa Ityadi” (Assamese), Mangesh Hadawale’s “Tingya”, Gajendra Ahire’s “Maai Baap”, Bipin Nadkarni’s “Aevdhe Se Aabhaal” and Vishal Bhandari’s “Kaalchakra” (all Marathi), Gnana Rajasekaran’s “Periyar” and Padma Magan’s “Ammuvagiya Naan” (both Tamil), Anjan Das’ “Jaara Brishtite Bhijechilo”, Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s “Ami, Yasin Aar Amaar Madhubala” (both Bengali), Makhonmani Mongsaba’s “Yenning Amadi Likia” (Manipuri).

The jury was headed by veteran …

IFFLA 2008 Announces Call for Entries
The Sixth Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) seeks narrative, documentary, music videos, experimental, children’s and animated films of any length and format. IFFLA will run April 22-27, 2008 at ArcLight Hollywood, a state-of-the-art facility located in the heart of Los Angeles. Jury and Audience Choice Prizes will be awarded for Best Feature, Documentary and Short Film.
IFFLA 2007 had over 6,000 attendees and screened 36 films from 8 countries. In addition to the high-quality of presentation of their work, filmmakers in attendance gained access to an eclectic mix of professionals from the Los Angeles film industry.

Check out what our past filmmakers …

Pickle, an online journal on the entertainment industry, believed to be backed by one industry body, has reported that the Film Federation of India (FFI) has started the process to select the Indian entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar in the 80th Academy Award.

It says that a cross section of industry experts and critics contacted by it “squared in on” Feroz Abbas Khan’s Gandhi My Father (Hindi), Ameer Sultan’s Paruthiveeran (Tamil) and Maniratnam’s Guru (Hindi) as their favourite choice for nomination from India for the Oscars.

Some of the other films that are in the “radar of Oscar watchers” are Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Eklavya (Hindi), Shanker’s Sivaji (Tamil), Radhamohan’s Mozhi (Tamil) and Rosshan Andrews’ Notebook (Malayalam), it claims. But it adds the rider, “Analysts appreciated the films listed in this para but were not confident to bet on any of these movies.”

According to Pickle, Gandhi My Father and …

One look at it, and you will realize that it is a typical South Indian village.

The vista evokes nostalgia in every Anna, Chetta, Thambi and Thamma — the rusty red (Mangalore) terracotta tiled roofs on the cute little row of houses that are huddled together like one single cozy family; the dusty roads, all of them ending in unison near one chowk - the center of the village and a major landmark - where a grand colonial looking statue stands aloft ceremonially adorned by the crows and pigeon poop; a post office; a cinema theater - sinima hall - that plays old South Indian movies; a push cart ice cream seller; a huge Pipal tree under which sits a fortune teller, who has decorated the tree with his handmade hand charts that explain his expertise; a beggar clad like a sadhu; a sweetshop and the disillusioned owner …

The movie begins. But the screen’s still black. Then slowly the blackness starts rising up like a curtain, unveiling the eye-piercing brightness which hits you hard.

Then suddenly you, the viewer, realize that the camera, literally, has taken you for a ride — you are in a car which just moved out of the dark garage into a sunny street, and the rising darkness was the garage’s shutters rolling up.

Just to help you appreciate the intelligence of the above scene, I will have to point you to Alfonso Cuarón’s recent hit Children of Men, where he used this same camera movement for one of the crucial scenes.

A classic example of intelligent story telling by camera - making the camera show the character’s point of view, and, at places, become a character itself.

Accident — a movie prophetically named — was one …

I read santosh Sivan’s post on PFC and read comments from PFCers on how his frames invoked nostalgia. In my memory if there is one movie maker and cinematographer who could evoke such strong nostalgia, it would be , without a doubt Balu Mahendra. The camera movements and the frame composition in the movies he cranked would speak volumes of the mood and setting than a million lines of descriptive writing. I would like to take the liberty of being a member of PFC and recount the glorious days of Balu Mahendra, a man who loves cinema next only to his life.
Balu - the God of lens
Balu as cinephiles in south call him, is an FTII Pune graduate in cinematography, close pal of Amol Palekar and other Marathi film legends. He rapidly established his name as a cinematographer par excellence. While his contemporaries captured backdrop, colours and went for enormous …

Charlie Chaplin was not mute but he worked in the silent films. Without uttering dialogues from his mouth he was able to create magic on screen through his acting ability and he proved that you don’t need heavy dialogues to make impressive presence on the screen. Presence has to be generated through facial expressions, expressions in the eyes and body language.
Almost all great actors of the world have never been dependent solely on their dialogue delivery skills and they have been equally great in the scenes where they have not a single word to say from mouth. If three factors, face, eyes and body language don’t support an actor then s/he never can deliver a good performance no matter he has got best dialogues written by best writer of the world and we call such actors as actors with wooden face.
Kamal Hasan did wonder in “Pushpak” where he …

The festival has concluded and has, like all the festivals, has left a warehouse of memories, experiences and conversations. Before I go into the films of Day Three and Four, I would like to confess that it gets telling on your reactive senses if you try to catch up with all the films, because a festival is lot more about than just films. In this particular one, they were showing films at two places, one of the regular screen, and one upstairs on Aquascope, so like they said on the opening, save the possibility for you being two places at one time, you can’t watch all the films. And while I used to doze off a little in midst of a film, I quietly used to sneak out and realize there is so much happening that you can only enjoy the moment without much planning …

Received from Worldwide Film Distribution yahoogroup… Please spread the word!

Let me take this opportunity to introduce you about me and social activities of our organization. …

I am working with a government organization, one of the most important & entertainment department called “NATIONAL FILM CIRCLE” is given to me and I am looking for your help to expand the membership.

What is “NATIONAL FILM CIRCLE” ?

The National Film Development Corporation Limited (NFDC) is a Government of India Enterprise set up with the objective of fostering excellence in Indian Cinema. It provides film enthusiasts in Mumbai an opportunity to see good meaningful World-Class Films throughout the year through the “NATIONAL FILM CIRCLE”.

For the past twenty-five years, National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) has produced/co- produced more than 200 films in 15 languages, including English. Amongst these all several internationally acclaimed films like Gandhi, The Making of Mahatma, Mirch-Masala, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Sardar, Parinda and …