IANS

The International Film Federation of India (IFFI)-2006, starting in Goa Nov 24, will focus on southern cinema and keep Bollywood to a minimum.

During IFFI-2004 and IFFI-2005 many complained that the film festival was monopolised by Hindi filmmakers and their movies. This year, attempts are on to bring in more regional films. The spotlight will be on south Indian language films, said a source in IFFI.

The Indian retrospective section will feature films of the award-winning Malayalam director G. Arvindan. Tributes will also be paid to Malayalam actor Oduvil Unnikrishnan, Telugu actress P. Bhanumati and veteran actress Padmini, all of whom passed away recently.

The organisers will pay special tributes to Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who championed meaningful cinema, action actress Nadira, music maestro Sachin Dev Burman and actor Prithviraj Kapoor.

The schedule for the 10-day festival was finalised at a meeting presided over by Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi and Goa Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane.

Although Dasmunshi confirmed that Goa will be the permanent venue for the festival, he insisted that he had not received any proposal from Goa saying it would handle the festival on its own from 2007.

According to the memorandum of understanding to be signed between the information ministry and the Goa government, the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF) will be in charge of selection of films and invitations to VVIPs. The Entertainment Society of Goa will handle the logistics.

The competitive section of the film festival will be limited to films from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

There will be a special jury prize for the most creative director for his individual artistic contribution.

The jury will be headed by Vincent Maraval, producer and co-founder of Wild Bunch, a French production company.

Award-winning Assamese director Jahnu Barua is going to be one of the judges. This apart, DFF has not been able to attract any big names from international cinema to serve on the jury.

The Spanish comedy "Volver" will kickstart the festival and the Mexican film "Babel" will be the closing film of the festival.

IFFI-2006 will have five sections - Country Focus, Films India Worldwide, Indian Premieres, Foreign Retro and Master Classics.

Individual curators like Malti Sahai (Country Focus), Uma da Cunha (Film India World Wide), Deepak Gehlot (Indian Premieres), Sudhir Nandgaonkar (Foreign Retro) and Vijay Singh (Master Classics) are appointed for each of these sections.

As part of the mega film event there will be a retrospective of the films of the reputed Spanish actor, Javier Barden. There will also be a retrospective on digital editing by veteran Hollywood film editor Steven Cohen.

This year, once again, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will hold a Big Picture seminar to focus on various issues concerning the industry. The CII is also organising the film bazaar.

Over 200 VIPs, including international and domestic film personalities, are likely to be invited by the DFF for IFFI-2006.

But the names of the chief guests for the opening and closing ceremonies and invitees have not yet been finalised. The chief secretary will supervise this year's film festival.