Much to the cheer of the connoisseurs of Indian language cinema, the 9th edition of the Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar (IFFB) will open at the IDCOl auditorium here on Wednesday showcasing 35 carefully-curated films in 12 Indian languages.
The week-long festival is being hosted by the well-known Film Society of Bhubaneswar (FSB), the only of its kind in the State at present, in collaboration with the National film Archives of India, Pune and the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy.
“The festival will screen contemporary works of filmmakers in Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Manipuri, Khasi, Odia, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, Hindi and Punjabi. Some of the award winning films include ‘Kutrame Thandanai’ (crime and punishment) by M Manikandan, ‘Merku Thodarchi Malai’ (Western Ghats) by lenin Bharathi (both in Tamil), ‘Munro Thuruthu’ (Munroe Island) by Manu (Malayalam), ‘Capital I’ by Amartya Bhattarcharyya (Odia) and ‘Masaan’ by Neeraj Ghaywan (Hindi)”, the hosts informed.
The highlight of the festival would be a retrospective of late legendary Malayalam filmmaker G Aravindan to whom the festival offers a tribute. Seven of his path-breaking movies are slated to be screened: Chidambaram, Kanchan Seeta, Thampu, Kummatty, Estheppan, Pokkuveyil and Marattam besides a documentary on the legend made by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Shaji N Karun.
Kannada cinema’s living legend Girish Kasaravalli would be chief guest of the festival while Ananya Kasaravalli, Babu Eshwar Prasad from Kerala Chalachitra Academy that hosts International Film Festival of Kerala and Bodo filmmaker Manju Borah are among the many acclaimed invitees who would attend the festival, the hosts added.
The festival will have a series of interactions and discussions like the role of media in development of cinema culture in Odisha, the role of literature in cinema, the future of independent cinema making in Odisha and its globalisation and the importance of digitisation in democratising cinema. There will also be workshops for students film enthusiasts while there will be separate slots for screening of students’ films, they mentioned.