Third Eye Asian Film Festival: Interactions news

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Anirban Lahiri's dispatch from the Third Eye Festival of Asian Cinema

Mongolian cinema probably for the first time came to India, thanks to the organizers of this year's Third Eye Asian Film Festival. A Enkhtaivan's film Moilkhon (2007) is based in Northern Mongolia at the time of Stalinist regime, before the World War II. The Director of the film came to this festival along with his daughter, working as his interpreter.

Asked about Mongolian film industry, Mr Enkhtaivan said it was not quite a new industry. Influenced by the Chinese and the Russian industries from the two sides, somehow Mongolia managed to find their own film culture back in the 1950s. These days they are producing 110 - 120 films a year. While Mr Enkhtavan's films are about Mongolian struggle to get freedom from the Russian rule, other filmmakers take up common themes like romance, comedy and thriller regularly.

Mr Enkhtavan said, in reply to a question, that Mongolians watch Indian films. Many people from Bollywood made its ways there. The other major import in Mongolia is the Chinese films.

Mr Enkhtavan, together with some people, has formed a production company called Idugan Entertainment. They are continuously producing documentaries, TV shows and music videos, along with movies, to promote Mongolian history and culture, both inside and overseas.

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The director and principal casts of the Marathi film Vavtaal (2008) met at the Plaza cinema for an interactive session. The director, Shivaji Patil, said it was his wish to make the film as soon as he read the short story Kadambari. The lead roles Tejaswini and Ashok Samarth were also present in this session. Tejaswini recounted her experiences in this first feature by hers.

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Rituparna Sengupta, female protagonist of the Bengali film People under Heaven met the Press as the official representative for the film here. Interestingly some members from the Press asked her if this was her debut film. She won the National Film Festival Award in 1998, ten years ago, for the film Dahan. However, she took it lightly and replied that so far she had acted in more than 100 films in Bengali (in both sides of the partition), Oriya and Hindi. Asked about the current film, she said she liked to take up serious roles in off-beat films. She also praised the director and the cinematographer (Aseem Bose, national award winner for Buddhadeb Dasgupta's film Uttara (2000). a lot for taking up the trouble of finding a good location for a low budget film.