Two days from now, the 11-day International Film Festival of India (IFFI) will be underway promising delegates to be the biggest and best festival yet. Addressing a joint Press conference, officials of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as well as the Entertainment Society of Goa which jointly organises the festival, have promised a feast of technology, films as well as food during the course of the festival.
“This time round, IFFI 2015 in collaboration with the International Council for Film, Television and Audiovisual Communication (ICFT), Paris and UNESCO will present the ‘ICFT- UNESCO Fellini Prize’ to a film, which best reflects the ideals of peace, tolerance, love, harmony and friendship,” Festival director C Senthil Rajan told The Pioneer.
For his part, the Vice-Chairman of the Entertainment Society of Goa, Damodar Naik said that besides films there will be three food festivals that will run alongside IFFI.
“Three food festivals will be organised alongside the IFFI venue, ‘Palate’ which will showcase gourmet food from across the world, ‘Balcao’ which will be about Goan food and street food,” Naik said. For those not directly involved with IFFI, the ESG has set up life size props for the entertainment of others.
“Those who love to take selfies can use the props we are setting up along the Festival mile, which will also have other paraphernelia related to Indian cinema including photos, posters and anectoes,” Ameya Abhyankar CEO of the ESG said. Around 187 films from 89 countries 26 of which are official Academy award entries and including 47 from the Indian Panorama section, a rare Sanskrit film to open the 26-film strong Indian Panorama section, a fresh section for new world directors.
IFFI will also see a technological makeover with a dedicated Youtube channel as well as the facility of downloading festival films over the internal Wi-Fi and watching them at your leisure.
“We have a dedicated YouTube channel which will screen festival events including the opening and closing ceremonies. Celebrities who address media, will also be posed questions based on queries we get on Twitter from media as well as film critics,” Ira Joshi additional Director General of the Press Information Bureau said.
“A large chunk of the films screened at the festival will also be on a WiFi network within the festival campus,” Joshi added. More than 7,000 delegates from 38 countries, most from India, have registered for the festival which will also be accompanied by the ninth edition of the Film Bazaar, a networking event aimed at facilitating collaboration in the realm of production and distribution.
While ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ directed by Matthew Brown a film on the 1913 self-taught Indian mathematical genius Ramanajun and his friendship with GH Hardy who helped reveal the mathematics genius to the world will be the opening film, this year’s biggest Argentinean box office hit, The Clan (El Clan) will be the Closing Film of the festival. Academy Award winner director, Tom Hooper’s film ‘The Danish Girl’ will be the festivals mid fest film.
The festival will be opened by actor Anil Kapoor on November 20 and brought to a close by composer AR Rahman on November 30.