Indian Cinema

As FICCI Frames 2010 drew to a close today, two issues remained predominant over the three days of the Global Conference on the Business of Entertainment. Looking at both of them, the conference can be said to be skewed in favour of cinema sidelining its other siblings like television in the arena of entertainment. All the same, two really important issues concerning India cinema by and large i.e piracy and the state of script writers in India were addressed in reasonable depth.

There seems to be much bewilderment about the word ‘crossover’ in Indian cinema. A crossover film can quite literally be a film that crosses over its domestic market and performs well in international markets. But this definition, though endorsed by many filmmakers sounds too commercial. Are crossover films then those films which are based on a broad theme that a wide audience internationally can relate to irrespective of its box office performance? Or is crossover simply a term used for films which are neither here nor there; films largely shot in India with an Indian cast but international productions. Much as we may want, a Slumdog Millionaire or a Monsoon Wedding certainly cannot qualify as ‘Indian’ films that crossed over.

Mrinal Sen is an acknowledged Leftist. Yet a viewer of Khandhar will not come across Communist propaganda or even a red flag. There are no political speeches. The Mrinal-da of the overtly political Chorus-that won awards at Moscow and Berlin festivals apart from top Indian national honors--and Calcutta ’71 cannot be recognized as such in Khandhar.

Rhythm abound, Leaving Home, foremost, is a film about time. It’s an attempt to crunch nearly three decades of lived history of Indian Ocean in two hours. Watching the final cut – a worthy precipitate of the 195 hours of shot footage - I realised why editing is the most painful part of filmmaking. Every moment shot is worthwhile, why would you have captured it otherwise? What goes in, what doesn’t. Changing, rearranging. Cutting, and then cutting some more. These are all very difficult decisions to make.

The Indian Panorama of the 2009 International Film Festival of India, to be held in Panjim from November 23, will include six movies from Bengal, three from Karnataka, three from Maharashtra and two each from Kerala and Tamil Nadu. There will also be five Hindi films, two English and one each in Rajasthani, Konkani and Tulu.

Laxmikant Shetgaonkar's "The Man Beyond The Bridge" has been selected for the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival's (HKAFF) "New Talent Award" competition. It's the only Indian film in the list of eight titles selected for the competition. The two week long festival will go on till 30th of October.

Dev Benegal’s “Road, Movie” is in the official competition of the 22nd Tokyo International Film Festival. Dev’s film starring Abhay Deol , Satish Kaushik and Tanishtha Chatterjee tells the story of a young man who runs away from his home to escape his father’s hair oil business and joins a traveling film exhibition group.

The 53rd London Film Festival will screen five films from India. Master filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta returns to the festival with his latest “Janala” (The Window), while Shyam Benegal soon after his last “Welcome to Sajjanpur”, comes back with his “Well Done Abba”.

Raja Menon's recently released film "Barah Anna", which is all set to travel to Chicago Film Festival. This will be the only Indian film in the 45th edition of the festival.

14th Pusan Film Festival, October 8-16 is has a wide representation of Indian cinema. 13 Indian films including two shorts are being screened at the festival this year.