IFFI Bulletin - 26 th November - International Film Festival of India

Choosing best Indian film of last 100 years 

proves to be major conundrum 

Selecting one film as 

the best in a century 

of Indian cinema is as 

difficult as making a 

choice between a hundred 

mouth-watering dishes served 

to the connoisseur. 

It is therefore no 

surprise that various senior 

filmmakers and cineastes 

were unable to zero down to 

a unanimous choice, but they 

did manage to zero down on 

their individual choices for 

the best films of the century. 

In this interesting 

session, filmmakers Adoor 

Gopalakrishnan, Girish 

Kasaravalli, Sumitra Bhave, 

Shaji N Karun, Suresh Jindal, 

and Sunil Sukhtankar found 

the choice not easy. 

The subject before them 

was Once in a Lifetime: A 

Single Favourite Film from 

100 years of Indian Cinema. 

The session was moderated 

by IFFI Director Shankar 

Mohan. 

Perhaps choosing a 

Restored print of the iconic Garam Hawa 

to be released in January 

Ironically, the iconic film Garam Hawa 

directed by the eminent M S Sathyu was 

made in 1974 on a shoestring budget of 

Rs 2.49 lakh, but its ruined print has been 

restored by Indikino Edutainment by spending 

over a crore of rupees. 

Stating this, Sathyu said he had made 

the film very honestly to depict the reality of 

partition, and not to win awards. 

He said he had received the budget for the 

film from the Film Finance Corporation, later 

rechristened as National Film Development 

Corporation. 

Sathyu added that it was difficult to achieve 

the expected quality since only one lens, one 

single camera and six lights were at his disposal, 

and he had to make it with limited technology 

at actual locations in Agra. “We had made our 

film literally as a silent film, since the locations 

where we were shooting the film was very 

noisy, and so we dubbed the film 

later at R K Studios in Mumbai”, 

he said. 

R D Deshpande, the Chairman of Indikino 

Edutainment Private Limited, and Bhavesh 

Thakkar, Chief Strategy Director-Marketing 

& Distribution, said they were charged when 

they saw the film, which is a milestone movie 

in the annals of India’s film history. They saw 

the film on DVD. “The film has its heart at 

the right place and has a unique appeal to the 

one-time favourite may 

be an unfair proposition, 

but Curator 

Meera Dewan said 

proposing this 

theme was her way of 

getting directors and 

delegates to jointly reflect on 

a 100 years of Indian Cinema, 

and thereby salute it. 

From his first list which 

included Ek Din Pratidin 

PRESS CONFERENCE 

by Mrinal Sen, Satyajit 

Ray’s Aparajito and Ritwik 

Ghatak’s Meghe 

Dhaka Tara, Adoor 

singled out the 

Ray film. Qualities 

such as purity, nonmanipulative 

nature and 

sense of universality were 

what set apart Aparajito as 

his final choice. 

Girish had a tie: Ray’s 

youth. Today in this age of marketing, it is very 

necessary to entice the youth , because it is 

only those in the 18 to 35 age group who like 

to watch human interest stories,” Thakkar said. 

Subhash Chheda, Director 

of the Company, said since the 

target of the film was today’s 

youth, it was decided to restore the film by 

using relevant technology with 2K and the 

colour correction as supervised by Sathyu 

himself. Since the sound did not match the 

great visuals, it was also decided to go in for 

audio restoration by upgrading mono to 5.1 

Dolby Digital. Chheda added that even the 

subtitling in English were redone and it was not 

just a standalone effort but team work. 

Pather Panchali and 

Adoor’s Mukhomukkam. 

He considered both these 

films as more than depicting 

drama, rather showing a way 

of life, and so creating for 

the viewer a great sense of 

satisfaction. 

Sumitra Bhave selected 

Bandini, Sahib Biwi aur 

Ghulam, Garm Hawa, 

Agnisnan and Kunko, and 

Murli Chhatwani, Head Distribution, DAR 

Motion Pictures, said his company had decided 

to associate itself with meaningful Indian 

Cinema with International appeal and has 

planned to release Garm Hawa in all the major 

metros in India in not less than 100 screens 

in various multiplexes. The film will now be 

released on 18 January 2013 which marks the 

centenary of the birth of Balraj Sahni who 

played the main role, he added. 

Sathyu who lamented the fact that 

humanistic stories like Garm Hawa are missing 

today since violence has become important in 

every film, whether it is Agneepath or Gangs of 

Wasseypur or any other film. 

-Jyothi Venkatesh 

finally settled for the last. 

Thampu by the late G 

Aravindan was Shaji N 

Karun’s choice. Interestingly, 

he had been the film’s 

cinematographer, though he 

said his selection criteria was 

not subjective, he said. 

Sunil Sukhtankar also 

zeroed in on Meghe Dhaka 

Tara. Film critics and film 

aficionados shared their 

selections with the audience 

at the Chai ‘n Chat lounge. 

Senior critic and author 

Pradip Biswas gave his vote 

to Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan 

Shome; the Film Division’s 

DG V S Kundu selected 

Ganga Jamuna by Nitin Bose; 

Unnikrishnan, Physicist and 

a film society pioneer, settled 

for Ray’s Charulata. 

Adoor had the last word, 

when he wondered why 

the selections tended to tilt 

towards older films and not 

recent productions. “Time is 

required to judge a film.” 

At 

Today 

Press Conference (Media 

Centre, Maquinez 

Palace Annexe) 

11.00 am: Ingrid Veninger 

(Director); Jacob 

Switzer (Actor, I am A 

Good Person/I am a 

Bad Perso) Harrikrishna 

Anenden (Director, 

Children of Troumaron) 

12.30 pm: Girish Kasaravalli, 

Kannada film director 

3.00 pm: M Tayfur Aydin 

(Director, Trace) 

Hüseyin Karabey 

(Director) & Aysun 

Gizem Soysaldi (Actor, 

Do Not Forget Me 

Istanbul) Yesim Ceren 

Bozoglu (Actor, Where 

the Fire Burns) 

5.00 pm: Mr. Shankar Mohan, 

Director, IFFI and Mr. 

Manoj Srivastava, CEO 

ESG 

Highlight of the day 

Chai ‘n Chat 

session on 

“Once in a Life Time: 

A Single Favourite 

Film in a 100 Years of 

Indian Cinema”

02 IFFI | November 26, 2012 SCREENING SCHEDULE 

26th November 2012 

Susanne Bier hopes to find good stories 

in India for co-production ventures 

My first job as a filmmaker is 

to not make a boring film. I 

don’t see a conflict between 

art and commerce, but I do 

see one between boredom and commerce.” 

Susanne Bier, the Danish director/ 

screenwriter whose Retrospective is being 

held at IFFI, could not have been more 

accurate about understanding the pulse of 

the viewers. 

Two years after she bagged the Best 

Director award for ‘In a Better World’ at 

IFFI Goa in 2010 – an award collected 

by her son as he could not make it, she 

is being honoured again with a six-film 

retrospective. In a Better World had gone 

on to win the Golden Globe in 2011. 

Born in 19670, Susanne Bier grew 

up in Copenhagen. She studied art at 

the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 

and architecture at the Architectural 

Association in London, before graduating 

from the Danish Film School in 1987. Her 

graduation film won first prize at the film 

school festival in Munich, after which 

she got the opportunity to direct her first 

feature film, Freud’s Leaving Home (1991). 

Like It Never Was Before, made four 

years later, is the sensitive story of a 

middle-aged, mild mannered married 

Susanne Bier, 

man who’s just been passed over for a 

promotion. 

In 1997 Bier directed the psychological 

thriller Credo, and in 1999, she made the 

romantic comedy The One and Only/ 

The Only One, which was a big box-office 

hit-- more than 850,000 filmgoers, out of 

the 5.5 million population of Denmark, 

watched this film. 

Susanne achieved a notable 

international breakthrough in 2002, with 

the Danish Dogma film Open Hearts, 

which tells the story of two couples, whose 

lives are destroyed by a car accident. 

Bier received various awards for the 

film, including the International Critics 

Award at Toronto Film Festival, where 

the citation read, Open Hearts proves that 

Dogma has come of age and matured into 

a potent cinematic language that skillfully 

captures the freeing of real emotions that 

extreme trauma creates within the lives of 

the characters in her film. 

Apart from Open Hearts, Brothers 

(2004) which received the Audience 

Award at Sundance and Best Acting 

awards at San Sebastian, After the 

Wedding (2006) which was nominated for 

an Academy Award are also being shown 

in this retrospective. In the latter, Mads 

Mikkelson (the villain of the James Bond 

film Casino Royale) plays Jacob, an earnest 

man, a teacher and manager of a school for 

orphaned boys in India, who reluctantly 

returns to Denmark when a prospective 

donor offers significant funding. But the 

offer is not as philanthropic as it seems. 

Highly awarded for her films, Susanne 

says the awards only open windows but do 

not change her life otherwise. 

Interestingly, she is scouting for 

good Indian stories to be filmed as coproduction 

ventures. 

Susanne Bier has two children Gabriel 

Bier Gislason (aged 23) and Alice Esther 

Zanden Bier (17). Currently, she lives with 

producer and composer Jesper Winge 

Leisner in Copenhagen. - Siraj Syed

IFFI | November 26, 2012 

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gmoZb ‘mIrOmZr AmµOmX


05 

IFFI tribute to two masters 

of Indian Cinema 

IFFI has always endeavoured 

to remember and pay 

tributes to some of the 

greatest minds in Indian 

and international cinema, and 

the large feast of cinema this 

year is testimony to this effort. 

As part of this, IFFI has paid 

laudable tributes to two Indian 

filmmakers who have excelled 

in their own ways on screen. 

While Muzaffar Ali has given 

us some films which will always 

be memorable for their music 

and depiction of culture, Girish 

Kasaravalli has presented gems 

that have left their sheen even 

on the international scene with 

the large number of awards 

they have garnered in India and 

overseas. 

At a time when India is 

marking one hundred years of 

Indian cinema, these two names 

gain a special significance. 

Muzaffar Ali is showcasing 

his films Umrao Jaan (1981), 

Aagman (1982) and Anjuman 

(1986) while Girish is presenting 

Mane (1989), Thai Saheba (!997) 

and Dweepa (2002). 

Muzaffar Ali aka Raja 

Muzaffar Ali was born in 

Lucknow on 21 October 

1944. He is not only a Hindi- 

Urdu filmmaker of repute but 

also a composer, a poet, an 

artist, a fashion Designer as 

well as a Social Worker. Born in 

the royal Muslim Rajput family 

of Kotwara, he had gone to La 

Martiniere College and later 

on graduated in Science from 

Muzaffar Ali 

Aligarh Muslim University. 

He was the eldest son of Raja 

Sajid Hussein of Kotwara while 

his mother belonged to a noble 

family of Sheikhpur, Badaun. His 

son Shaad Ali is also a filmmaker 

in his own right. Before turning 

a filmmaker, Muzaffar had 

worked in the advertising 

and publicity department of 

Air India. 

As a filmmaker he had made 

his debut on the silver screen 

with ‘Gaman’ in the year 1978, 

winning high critical acclaim. 

His next feature film was Umrao 

Jaan, a courtesan melodrama 

based on a novel, which remains 

his most celebrated work till 

this date and one which fetched 

a National Award for its lead 

actress Rekha besides being still 

remembered for its melodious 

musical score. 

Ali then went on to make 

several feature films, TV Series 

as well as documentaries and 

short films. The other features 

include Anjuman and Aagman. 

The documentaries include 

Khizan, Ganga Teri Shakti Apar, 

India – An Unusual Environment 

For Meetings, Kuye Yaar Mein, 

Together Forever, Vadakath: A 

Thervad in Kerala, Laila Majnu 

Ki Nai Nautanki, Venue India, 

Woodcraft Of Saharanpur, 

Vasiqedar: The Pensioners Of 

Avadh, and Sheeshon Ka Masiha. 

The TV Series that gave him a 

name was Jaan-e-Alam and his 

short films include ‘Aaya Basant 

Sakhi’, ‘Congregation’, ‘Kali 

Mohini’, ‘Semal Ka Darakht’, 

‘Wapas Chalo’, ‘Sunehre Sapne’ 

and ‘Wah! Maan Gaye Ustaad’. 

He made a feature film ‘Zooni’ 

shot in Kashmir with Vinod 

Khanna and Dimple Kapadia 

but it is yet to be released. 

Umrao Jaan narrates the story 

of a woman abducted as a child 

and sold in Lucknow. She trains 

as a singer and dancer. She falls in 

love with an aristocratic Nawab, 

later finds companionship with 

her childhood friend, before 

escaping her claustrophobic life 

with a bandit. 

In Aagaman, farmer Ram 

Prasad dares to revolt against 

the stranglehold of the mill on 

their lives. His son Mohan goes 

to Lucknow and returns as a 

lawyer. Together, they liberate 

the villagers from this tyranny. 

Anjuman is the story that 

deals with the plight of those 

involved in chikan embroidery. 

Anjuman does chikan work to 

augment her family’s income 

and demands fair treatment for 

Girish Kasaravalli 

the chikan workers. 

Girish Kasaravalli is a 

Kannada film director who in 

a career spanning 30 years has 

not only won International 

and National Awards but also 

41 state film awards. Born in 

Karnataka, he had graduated in 

Pharmacology before going on 

to graduate from the Film and 

Television Institute of India, 

Pune, with a Gold Medal in the 

year 1975. 

He was inspired by films 

of Akira Kurosawa, Ray, Ozu, 

Fellini, and Antonioni and 

his conviction in neorealist 

cinema deepened. In his final 

year, he was chosen to be the 

assistant director of legendary 

filmmaker B V Karanth for his 

film Chomana Dudi. His student 

film Avashesh won the President 

Silver Lotus Award for Best 

Experimental Short Film. 

He played a major role in 

shaping New Indian Cinema 

in the 70s by creating some of 

its masterpieces. He had made 

his debut as a director with 

Ghatashraddha in the year 1977 

which had gone on to win a 

National Award for Best Feature 

film, a hat trick which he had 

achieved with three of his other 

films like Tabarane Kathe, Thai 

Saheba and Dweepa. The last 

two are being showcased in the 

tribute section, highlighting his 

prolific career as an acclaimed 

director. 

In addition, other critically 

acclaimed films that Kasaravalli 

has made are, Kraurya, 

Grihabhangha, Hasina, 

Nayi Neralu, Gulabi Talkies, 

Kanasemba Kudureyaneri, and 

Koormavatara. Mane was also 

made in Hindi as Ek Ghar. 

While both the celebrity 

directors Girish Kasaravalli and 

Muzaffar Ali have also been 

bestowed with the Padam Shri 

Award, Muzaffar Ali has also 

won a Filmfare Award. 

Mane is a Kafkaesque tale 

about a young couple whose 

marital life is disturbed because 

the rented one room tenement is 

disturbed all the time. 

Thai Saheba narrates the 

story set in a period immediately 

before and after India’s 

independence about Narmada 

Thai, the second wife of freedom 

fighter Appa Sahib, who decide to 

adopt the child of Venkobanna, a 

close relative. 

Dweepa deals with the 

issue of building dams and the 

displacement of the natives. 

-Shaheen Raaj 

Filipino filmmaker says he wants to 

present universal themes in his films 

He worked 

15 years as 

production 

designer in 

films, before a friend 

offered to fund his first film 

The Masseur in 2005 for 

only 50,000 pesos. It went 

on to win the Audience 

Award at the well-known 

Locarno film festival. 

Today, Brilliante Mendoza 

is the most acclaimed 

contemporary filmmaker 

from the Philippines. 

He has made as many 

as 16 films within a period 

of only ten years, which 

have been screened at the 

top festivals of the world, 

and won many awards. The 

biggest prize of course was 

the Best Director Award 

at the Cannes Festival in 

2009 for Kinatay, a story 

of corruption, sex and 

gruesome violence that 

shocked many, but became 

a kind of cult film. 

The soft-spoken 

director who seems out of 

sync with his violent films, 

made a multi-national 

film ‘Captive’ earlier this 

year starring French 

Brilliante Mendoza 

actress Isabelle Huppert, 

which dealt with the 

famous kidnapping case in 

his country by the ruthless 

Abu Sayyaf Muslim 

terrorist group in 2001. 

He followed this with 

a small, moving film Thy 

Womb, centering round the 

Muslim fishing community 

of a picturesque but 

little-known town in his 

country. The movie won 

two awards at the Venice 

Festival features at IIFI in 

Competition. 

Asked about the two 

totally different films in the 

same year Captive and Thy 

Womb which have Muslim 

themes though different 

in style, he said the story 

was what mattered to him. 

“Captive was a big film 

which dealt with many 

issues, and I got funds from 

many sources, to make it. 

Thy Womb was the simple 

story of a child-less couple, 

and I used my funds and 

my team as with my other 

movies. That’s why the 

styles are very different in 

the two films. 

He denied any 

intention of wanting to 

show two sides of the 

Islamic religion. “I base all 

my films on true stories”. 

“I thoroughly 

researched on Captive, 

and showed the events 

as objectively as possible. 

There was no intention to 

vilify any group or religion. 

The intention of the film 

was to show not merely the 

issue of hostage-taking, but 

how humans can withstand 

an extreme situation” . 

He said it was always 

the content of the film 

that mattered. “I see no 

boundaries when I make my 

film. What’s important to 

me is the story of ordinary 

people in extraordinary 

situations, and their 

struggles and triumphs.” 

Focusing on landscapes 

was deliberate - to show 

the beauty of that part of 

the country and of a town 

like Tawi-Tawi that not 

many know about. “As a 

filmmaker, I feel that it 

is my duty to show also 

the beautiful landscape 

that our country has been 

gifted with.” 

He said international 

festivals are very important 

to him, because they are the 

portals to world cinema. They 

serve as a venue to showcase 

different cultures and 

perspectives. They are also 

an avenue for him and other 

Filipino directors to make an 

inroad into other countries. 

Many Filipino directors 

are known internationally 

today, because of these film 

festivals. 

He added: “India has 

a special place in my 

heart, as it has such a rich 

and diverse culture. IIFI 

Goa has opened many 

opportunities for me. I got 

to meet many important 

people in the Indian film 

industry, as also world 

cinema here.

06 


Indian filmmakers rue hold of multiplexes, 

lack of distribution outlets 

Abhijit Mazumdar, 

80% crowds just because it had the backdrop of a small village 

director of short film 

to accommodate a Bollywood in Tamil Nadu where female 

Vanishing Point made 

commercial film. ‘We desperately feticide was rampant, because 

his film by borrowing 

need a parallel distribution Kerala which has a matriarchal 

money from friends and 

system and I would not blame the type of society does not allow 

colleagues, and lamented that 

documentary filmmakers have 

to struggle a lot to get an outlet 

to showcase their films. The film 

is about two friends travelling 

by car to scout for locations for 

a small film they are planning to 

make. 

Sourav Sarangi who has made 

the documentary film Char: 

The No Man’s Island asserted 

him when his own country is not 

ready to fund him. Sourav added 

that his job was to make films and 

out to make his film which was 

based on a novel which he had 

read way back in 1999. “The 

NFDC because the distributors 

are not willing to buy their films. 

What can NFDC do if the PVR 

chain sold the tickets of my 

Punjabi film in Punjab at Rs 900 

each and Delhi at Rs 400 each’ 

Gurvinder asked. 

Unni Vijayan who has made 

his debut as a feature film maker 

with the English film Lessons In 

Forgetting which is a gripping 

such heinous acts. 

Unni admitted that he is 

facing problems in finding the 

distributor because no one is 

willing to touch his film which 

has a practical ending and he 

does not want to succumb to the 

pressures and make it an escapist 

film, because his is not a vendetta 

film but a serious issue-based film 

and he was naïve enough to make 

that there was practically no not distribute them, because he is novel stayed with me and I could and heartwarming story of it in English because his film had 

infrastructure or governmental not an activist and it is someone not forget any of the characters redemption, forgiveness and a blend of urban and rural milieu 

support for people in the country else’s responsibility. 

from the novel. Singh said that second chances woven around a set in contemporary Tamil Nadu 

who want to set out to make Gurvinder Singh whose it was sad that the multiplex single father and his daughter on where female feticide is rampant 

meaningful documentary films 

and short films and it pains him 

that South Korea is encouraging 

Punjabi feature Anhey Ghorey 

Da Daan figures in the Indian 

Panorama said that he had set 

chain PVR had pulled off his 

film within five days of its release 

though it was pulling more than 

her death bed, said that though 

he is from Kerala, he set out to 

make his film in English with 

but the government is turning a 

blind eye to the issue. 

-Jyothi Venkatesh 

Send social messages 

through cinema 

If one film deals with the question of children who 

are victims of sexual exploitation, another is about 

illegally procuring a child, and a third tells the story 

of gangsters in an allegorical fashion. 

Dutch filmmaker Jacco Groen said the film Lilet never 

happened had been made to raise awareness about the 

problem of child prostitution, a crime that is part of sex 

tourism. 

He was motivated to make the film after he met real life 

child sex worker Lilet in a psychiatric institution during a 

visit to the Philippines capital Manila to research a 

documentary. Lilet told Award winning actor Johanna ter 

Steege plays a social worker in the film. Groen says he selected 

Philippine actress Sandy Talag to play Lilet from 500 hopeful 

candidates. He also held a couple of workshops for the 

streetkids, two of whom, aged 13, were child prostitutes."They 

are traumatised and there is a problem of trust. They don't 

open up easily in front of a camera. I must say I was inspired 

by Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire to cast street kids who 

were crying as they sat through the film." 

Award winning Thai director Kongkiat Komsiri's 

crime drama Antapal (The Gangster) is a departure 

from the usual supernatural and comedy films popular 

in Thailand, Sakarin Suthamsamai who played the title 

role said. "Legends, folklore and the supernatural are an 

integral part of Thai culture" explains Sakarin who plays a 

pivotal role in "Antapal". 

Thailand's gangster era in the fifties provides the 

setting and backdrop for the film which explores the 

sordid underbelly of Bangkok’s gangland in a rockaround-the-clock 

mode. “Antapal" takes viewers through 

two generations of mobsters starting in the 1950s. 

Can by Turkish filmmaker and playwright Rasit 

Celikezer and film producer Burak Akidil who received 

the Sundance Festival's World Cinema Dramatic Special 

Jury Prize Award for their film said it is about a young 

happily married couple whose decision to illegally procure 

a child threatens their future together in Istanbul. "I work 

on a script as I go along and then decide whether it will 

end up as a play or a film. But I do prefer the cinematic 

medium" says Celikezer who wrote the screenplay in eight 

months and shot the film over a three-month period. 

Groen and Celikezer are keen on working with Indian 

film-makers. "Racit would like to fall in love with a lady 

who can help him make a film in India", Akidil said, in 

jest. 

-Ronita Torcato 

PRESS CONFERENCE 

Difficult to make meaningful films 

without sensitive producers: Sumitra 

Renowned filmmaker 

Sumitra Bhave feels it is very 

difficult to make meaningful 

films without having the 

backing of sensitive producers. 

She said she and Sunil Sukhtankar 

were able to make Samhita only 

because Mukta Arts CEO Ravi Gupta 

came out in support. 

The film is the complex story 

of the relationships of a filmmaker 

who writes her own script for a film 

which is based on the subject of preindependence 

India in a princely 

state and gradually finds this affecting 

her own personal life. Sunil said the 

USP of their film is that while they 

shot the older portions of the film 

set in the princely era in Super 35, 

the contemporary portions set in 

the urban milieu were shot in the 

digital format after a long gap during 

which they made another film called 

Ha Bharat Majha. The gap actually 

helped them in contrasting the two 

different periods with perfection. 

Digital Technology has changed the face 

of cinema all over the world and camera 

equipment is becoming smaller. 

Not merely that, but the 

customer is beginning to prefer simpler 

technologies, experts who addressed the Open Forum on 

Emerging Technologies organized by IDPA and FFSI feel. 

Gaurav Markan who heads the Business wing of 

Canon – who are organizing a three-day workshop here 

– said Canon had gradually shifted from still to movie 

cameras and had not produced a range of small digital 

Devika Daftardar who plays the 

main lead of the filmmaker in the 

film as well as the role of the Queen 

said that it was a big challenge for her 

to play two totally different characters 

in the same film, wearing different 

costumes for both the characters 

which required completely different 

style of dialogue delivery. 

Veteran actress Uttara Baokar said 

the process of acting in Sumitra and 

Sunil’s film was extremely interesting 

because an actor gets to look at his 

or her own character in two different 

ways and as an actor it was extremely 

challenging for her to play dynamically 

OPEN FORUM 

Edited by: B B Nagpal on behalf of IFFI Secretariat, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, New Delhi. 

Hindi Editor: Dr. Rajeev Shrivastav, Co-ordinator: Rizwan Ahamd, Deputy Director, Mukesh Kumar, Asst Director 

Photos: Photo Division 

Printed at: Impressions, Belgaum 

different characters in both Samhita 

and the English film Lessons in 

Forgetting. Uttara added that working 

with Sumitra and Sunil was akin to 

being part of the theatre movement. 

Sumitra said as a filmmaker, 

she has always believed in writing 

her own scripts and since Samhita 

dealt with the subject of women’s 

liberation over the years, it was 

conceptually quite different. She 

said though she has been making 

films for the last three decades, she 

considers herself to be too ignorant 

as far business or marketing 

decisions are concerned. JV 

Filmmaking easier with digital portable cameras 

cameras which could be used even by students. These 

were in a range of Rs four lakhs to Rs 15 lakh. 

He said the aim was to publicize the cameras through 

workshops in media institutions and film schools. The 

aim was to take an educative approach and not a typical 

marketing structure. 

Filmmaker Vijay Bedi said the cameras being small 

were convenient as these could be used for wildlife 

filmmaking in which he specialized, since any small light 

or sound could disturb animals or insects being filmed. 

Filmmaker Anup Jotwani said that it was possible to 

covert the digital films which were in file format to reels 

when needed, but admitted that the process of scanning 

was expensive. 

Asked about downloading on computers, he said the 

DCP system that needs a password does not 

work on computers and one would need a DCP 

player for that. 

Indian Documentary Producers Association 

President Mike Pandey said the Association would help 

any aspirants to get finance for making films. IDPA was 

also hoping to get slots on various television channels and 

organize festivals to promote the documentary and short 

film format.

IFFI Bulletin - 26 th November - International Film Festival of India

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