Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

It indeed is a happy forbearing that now the fans of cinema are expanding all across the country and to promote the cause of good cinema international film festivals are also being organized to create awareness about the international cinema that the fans may not be able to see in normal course in the cinema halls.

Ahmedabad took a giant leap in this regard when it organized the International Film Festival from 24-28 June 2008 which was graced by the likes of Govind Nihlani, who was one of the jury members and Sudhir Mishra, Manisha Koirala were among the jury members. Such was the excitement about the event that fans and aficionados from as far place as Jaipur attended the film festival with great relish. It was indeed a great experience to soak in the ambience of the Film Festival outside Mumbai and to have a satisfaction about the fact that good and meaningful cinema indeed has wonderful future, and indeed as the new cities would evolve they could serve as the veritable platform to display the new talent and meaningful cinema.

The idea for organizing the film festival on an international scale in Ahmedabad got root in 2007, and in its genesis was the idea to promote the short films made by independent filmmakers from all over the world. In its initiation year when the film festival was held internationally in 2008, it invited 189 entries from 18 countries in 16 categories, of which 63 were international categories.

The occasion during the current year was also used to showcase the talent that is proliferating in Gujarat, and therefore a category of Cinema from Gujarat was also formulated. The category of Gujarat was specially formulated according to the organizers to tell the world that the films from Gujarat are not only about rural love stories and dandia but score of meaningful films have been made in Gujarat. To illustrate it films made in Gujarati during the last 50 years was included in this category. The idea of organizing the category for Gujarati films was to give a fillip to Gujarati films and provide them a new impetus and facilitate carving a niche on the international forum.

As the children have become a new category, the Film Festival had created a panorama of best Children Films and in this category Best of International Children Films was shown. Coinciding with the holidays in the schools the children category received an enthusiastic response from the children.

It indeed is a good beginning and may be as new cities develop new film festivals in different state capitals coinciding with their seasonal specialties could become an order of the day.


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