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IFFI'98

IFFI'99

Hindi

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       International Film Festivals generally speaking, aim at providing a common platform to filmmakers and cine-goers to witness the internationally acclaimed films, to watch new trends and techniques being adopted by different countries leading to a healthy competition for bringing about an improvement in standards of production. They are an unifying factor as acquainting with historical and cultural traditions of other nations through films the, festivals create deeper awareness and appreciation bringing about a solid base of understanding between different people.

       The practice of holding festivals started in Venice in 1932 as part of the city's traditional international Art Exhibition. The nations represented at this festival were USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the USSR. There were no awards. The Venice festival was followed in 1939 by the Cannes International Film Festival of France. In the course of time the film festival assumed increasing importance. The nations which were rebuilding their film industry after the World War saw in festivals a chance for world recognition. As international political alliances were being reconstituted, the festivals provided an opportunity for interaction. Festivals were started in Berlin, Moscow, Karlovy Vary (Czechoslovakia), London, San Francisco and New York City.

THE BEGINNING IN INDIA

         In India, the International Film Festival, for the first time, was organised in 1952 in Bombay. It was a non-competitive festival. A special feature of the inaugural function of the festival was the screening of the first film shown in Bombay by Lumiere Brothers in 1896. After running over a fortnight in Bombay the festival moved on to Calcutta, Madras & Delhi as well. The construction of open-air theatres for screening the films was another special feature of the festival.

       The venue for the second festival held in 1961 which was also non-competitive was New Delhi.

       The third festival, which happened to be the first competitive festival ever held in India was in 1965 in Delhi. It was graded 'A' category by Paris based Federation International De Producers De Films (FIAFP). With this recognition the festival in India came on par with Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Karlovy Vary and Moscow festivals.

THE IFFI INSIGNIA

        Following this recognition, India adopted, at its fifth festival in 1975, a permanent insignia. This comprises a representation of the peacock, India's national bird, with a permanent motto of the festival 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakum' ( The whole world is a family). The same year it was decided to hold a non-competitive festival of festival films (Filmotsav) alternating with IFFI. While the Filmotsavs were orgnaised at major film producing centres of India, IFFI was held in New Delhi only.

A BRIEF ABOUT THE SUBSEQUENT

         Venue being the same for all festivals, the fourth and fifth festivals were held from 5-18 December 1969 and 30 December 1974-12 January 1975 respectively. From the sixth festival onwards the period as well as the dates for the festival were fixed as 3-17 January every alternate year.

         The sixth festival was held in 1977 and silver peacock for best actor, actress and director was awarded for the first time. A film market was also set up for the first time by the IMPEC. Panorama of recent Indian regional features was organised.

          The seventh festival held in Delhi in 1979, was of special significance as it was the only competitive and exclusive international film festival organised in the entire third world during 1978-79. (the 1978 Tehran Festival could not be held). For the first time in the history of Indian Competitive Film Festivals, the jury was headed by a foreigner, Qusmane- Sembene of Senegal. Another significant aspect was the participation of women. There were two women on the jury (Chantal Akerman - Belgium and Marta Maszaves - Hungary).

          In the ninth festival held in 1983 a new section for screening of 16mm films was added. An important landmark, during the festival was the participation of twenty two third world countries. The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) has become a major forum of third world cinema.

       For the first time, the festival held in 1985, tenth in the series, had an international panorama of select short films, documedia, in an effort to create an identity for short films.

       In 1986 when Filmotsav '86 was held in Calcutta the Festival 's period as well as changed from 3-17 January to 10-24 January.

       The Eleventh IFFI held in 1987 gave a breakthrough for commercial cinema, through the introduction of Mainstream section.

        The significant change in the 12th IFFI held in 1989 was that it was made non-competitive following a decision taken in august 1988 by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that festivals in future will be non-competitive and all festivals would be called international Film Festival of India (IFFI), hence the festival held in Calcutta was called the 21st IFFI instead of Filmotsav 90.

          Another important decision taken in June 1989 was that the IFFI will hence forth be of 10 days duration only. The festival which used to be held from 10-24 January would now be held from 10-20 January. Hence the number of Films in the 'Cinema of the world/ section which was changed from 'Information section' from the 12th IFFI was reduced through the other sections of the festival remained unaffected.

            The 22nd IFFI was held in Madras. It had a focus on the south Korean cinema. Tributes were paid to the American director Robert Altman. Homage was paid to V.Shantaram, S.Mukherjee, Shankar Nag, 'Arundhati Devi and Manmohan Krishna. Diamond Jubilee of Indian cinema and Platinum Jubilee of Tamil cinema were celebrated during the festival.

            The 23rd IFFI was held in Bangalore. It had a special focus on "Films from Iran". Retrospecitives of Italian director Francisco Rosi and Cashier's cinema was organised. Tributes were paid to Anne Wheeler and King Ampaw. In the Indian section a retrospective of Kannada cinema was organised and homage was paid to R.R.Panthulu, G. Aravindan and Balaraj Sahni.

           The 24th IFFI was held in New Delhi. The festival focussed on the Vietnamese cinema. Retrospectives of Ingrid Bergman, Vittotio De sica, Kaurismaki brothers and Argos Films were organised. Homage was paid to Kanan Devi and Bhalji Pendharkar.

               The 25th IFFI dedicated to Satyajith Ray was held in Calcutta. The festival had a focus on 'films from Mongolia'. Homage was paid to Utpal Dutt and Vijay Bhatt. Tributes were paid to Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni Retrospectives of Liti and fons Rademakers, Ingmar bergman and Greta Garbo were also organised.

              The 26th IFFI was organised at Bombay, the birth place of Indian Cinema. The event marked the centenary of cinema. A special section was devoted to the film heritage. An exhibition on hundred years of cinema was also organised as part of the festival. Retrospectives of Federico Fellini, Zoltan Fabri, Amos Giati, Miguel Littin, Krystof Kielowski and Elvis Presley were organised. A section was devoted to the works of the Asian women directors and a special retrospective of Marathi cinema was also organised.

              The 27th IFFI was again held in New Delhi. After many years the competition was revived on a limited scale. The section on 'Asian Women Directors' was made competitive. Retrospectives of Devys Arcaud; Gene Kelly; Marta Meszaros and Nanni Marteli was held. Tributes were paid to Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Zhang Yimon and Louis Malle. The festival also had a focus on 'Films from Iran'.

             The 28th IFFI was held in Thiruvananthapuram. The festival had a focus on 'South Africa'. Retrospectives of the polish director Krzystof Kielowski and the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf were organised. Homage was paid to the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni and Tribute was paid to the Chilean director Miguel Littin. In the Indian Section, Homage was paid to P.A.Backer and Smita Patil and Tribute was paid to Tapan sinha. a special retrospective was devoted to the Malayalam cinema giving a panoramic view of the 70 years of Malayalam cinema. To mark the 50 years of India's independence, a photo exhibition on the theme of 'National Integration and Indian Cinema' was also organised.

         The 29th IFFI was held in New Delhi. The festival focussed on recent African cinema, films from Sarajevo and Iran. Retrospectives of Poish film maker andrzej Wajda and Carlos Saura were organised. Homage was paid to the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. In the Indian section homage was paid to Chetan Anand and Basu Batacharya. A cinematic tribute was also paid to fifity years of Indian Independence by screening 10 nationalist classics. Another highlight of the festival was that competition which had been restricted of Asian women directors only, was broadened this year to include male directors as well.

        Highlight of the festival was that competition which had been restricted to Asian women directors only, was broadened this year to include male directors as well.

          The 30^th IFFI was held in Hyderabad from January 10-12, 1999. The festival was organised by the Directorate of Film Festivals, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, in collaboration with the Government of Andhra Pradesh and the Indian Film Industry. The festival was non-competitive. The inaugural function was held on January 10, 1999*. Veteran artiste Shri Dev Anand was the chief guest on the occasion. Shekhar Kapur's, "Elizabeth" was the opening film of the festival.

         The programme of the festival was divided into various broad categories. The 'Cinema of theWorld' section consisted of about 85 films from 45 countries, made in the past two years. These included films which has own awards or critical accaim at major International Film Festivals. Some important films in this section was Bernardo Bertolucci's "Besieged" (Italy); Carlos Marconicii's "Who the hell is Juliet" (Mexico); Rolf de Heer's "Dance to my song" (Australia); Francois Girard's "The red violin" (Canada); Claude Chaborl's "Rie ne vu plus"(France); Abolfazal Jalili's "Don" (Iran) and John Boorman's "The General" (Ireland).

             In the foreign retrospective and tributes section, the films of Hou Hsiao Hsien (Taiwan), theo Angelopoulos (Greece) and Zsolt Kezdi Kovacs (Hungary) were screened, as a tribute to the legendary filmmakers.

            One film each of Akira Kurosawa (Japan) "Ikjuru" and Sergei M. Einstein (Russia) "The Mexican fantasy" were screened to pay them homage. The Films of the Polish legend Wojciech Jerzy Has were also screened in the Retrospective section alongwith films of Rolan Jofee of the United State.

       A highlight of the festival was a new section "Visions of India' which would provide a look at our country, through the eyes of non Indian film makers. The Notable films in this section are:- Peter Brook's "Mahabharata" David Lean's, "A passage to India"; Richard; Attenborough's "Gandhi"'and James' Ivory's "Heat and Dust".

         Sixteen feature and twenty non-feature films were being showcased in the Indian Panorama section. Some important films in this section are:-Girish Kasarvalli's "Thai Saheb"; Tapan Sinha's"Ajab Gayer Ajab Katha"; Ram Gopal Verma's "Satya"; R. Shyama Prasad's "Agnisakshi" and Santosh Sivan's "Terrorrist"

            As in the past, in the Mainstream section twelve popular films of the year 1997-98 were screened. Some of these were "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" (Hindi) and "Choodalani Vundi" and "Tholi Prema" in Telugu.

         In the Indian retrospective/tribute section, tributes were paid to Bharathan. There was a 'Women in Cinema' section in which tributes were paid to P. Bhanumathi, Savithri and Shabana Azmi.

          The festival also had a retrospective of the Telugu films in which more than 50 films of various noted film directors were screened.

        Another highlight of the festival was the Focus Section. The festival focused on 'films from Argentina.' Nine select films from the country were screened in this section.

         A film market was set up by Indian Trade Promotion Organisation. Two seminars were organised by the Film Federation of India during the festival on:

1. "Visions of India-as others see us
2. "Cinema-200 viz a viz industry status.

      A special exhibition on cinema including a photo exhibition by DAVP was also be set up.

      A novel feature of the festival this year was the institution of the 'Lifetime achievement award'. This was presented to the veteran film director Bernardo Bertolucci. The award was given for his lifetime services to the art of film making.

        About 3000 delegates from all over the world to participated in various sections of the festival.

           January, 2000 heralds a new dawn as India prepare to hold its 31st IFFI from 10-20 January, 2000 at New Delhi.

           This will, perhaps, be the first Film Festival of the new Millennium