Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: Kiran Rao, Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane will launch three short films made by law breakers from an NGO called Aangan that works to rehabilitate and look after young offenders.

Each of the three films called Jaan, Shaan, Imaan — Love, Pride, Honour — have been scripted, produced and filmed by young boys between the age of 15 to 18 boys from the NGO.

Scripted, produced and filmed by these boys, the films will be screened together as a 10-odd minute short film since they are in an unfinished stage. The films depict the stories of circumstances that led them into a vicious circle of crime through remand homes and juvenile jail.

Says Aangan trustee Shailja Mehta, “The idea is to start a discussion about the state of these children. We try and bring focus to the cycle of vulnerability and crime, by bringing them out of certain high-risk areas like Govandi, Bhiwandi, Antop Hill and Dongri and helping them make better choices.”

The event will be held at Mehboob Studio on Wednesday in the presence of the filmmakers. Vijay Krishna Acharya, writer of Guru (2008) and Dhoom (2007), would also be present to support the directors.
 

MUMBAI: Debutant director Kranti Kanade has signed Harvey Keitel to play a role inspired by the Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines in his film Against Itself.

The film casts Kietel as a 90-year old American schoolmaster Edward Baker, who struggles against a tide of anti-Christian sentiment that threatens his students, his school and his life. 

Staines was burnt alive by Hindu extremist Dara Singh in Orissa on 22 Janurary 1999. Staines‘ sons, aged 10 and six, were also charred to death when their station wagon outside a tribal education camp was set aflame by Dara Singh and his mob of fundamentalists.

Keitel is known for his performances in classics such as Martin Scorcese‘s Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Quentin Tarantino‘s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion‘s The Piano and Holy Smoke, plays a 90-year old in Against Itself 20 years older than his real age.

Kanade’s last film Bal won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The screenplay of Against Itself has won the IFFLA film fund development grant instituted by the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.

MUMBAI: Due to Cricket World Cup and exam period, film releases are on hold for the next few weeks barring an odd small movie.

Having done reasonably well in its opening week, Tanu Weds Manu makes the most of an open week. It collected Rs 83 million in the second week, thus taking its two-week total to Rs 261 million, an earning proposal for all concerned. The film has been doing well especially at select multiplex properties.

7 Khoon Maaf adds another crore to its 3rd week to takes its tally to Rs 166 million.

Patiala House collects Rs 7 million in its 4th week, thus netting a total of Rs 304 million.

MUMBAI: The 10-day Indian Film Festival (IFF) 2011: Bollywood and Beyond will host a Vidya Balan retrospective. Films that will comprise the retrospect would be Heyy Babyy, Parineeta, Ishqiya and No One Killed Jessica among others.

The festival kicked off on 12 March with the screening of the Vidya Balan, Rani Mukerji- starrer No One killed Jessica and the British film West is West.

Other films that will be screened are Rituparno Ghosh‘s Bengali film Abohomaan and Ananth Mahadevan‘s Marathi film Mee Sindhutai Sapkal. Also screening would be Collin John D‘Cunha’s short film Mumbaikar Ganesh.

Says festival director Mitu Bhowmick Lange, “This year we‘ve made a conscious effort to bring you films that eloquently express a new sophistication in contemporary Indian cinema; a hugely exciting seismic, cultural shift that must be shared. The aim is to showcase just how absolutely versatile and unique is our film industry. We have ventured beyond Bollywood to include some of the finest regional films.”

The festival will screen films in Sydney (9 to 19 March), Melbourne (11 to 20 March) and Adelaide (22 to 29 March).

The festival will closes with producer-actress Juhi Chawla and director Onir‘s I Am, a film that explores the issues of homosexuality, prostitution and child abuse.

MUMBAI: After winning six international awards, Gujarati film Harun-Arun has won the Audience award at the Freeze Frame Film Festival, Canada.

Harun-Arun, produced by the Children‘s Film Society and directed by Vinod Ganatra, is the story of Harun, a young boy who is extremely fond of Indian films and songs. The rough life in a hostile environment has taught Harun a lot of survival skills. He has been hearing stories about his family in India and is keen to visit them. The visit excites him, but when the two are separated while crossing the border, Harun is compelled to undertake the rest of his journey to Lakhpat on his own.

On the Indian side, Harun comes across three Indian children who take him under their wings, hiding and protecting him without the knowledge of their mother Valbai, until he finds a new home. An exuberant game of hide-and-seek ensues in this heartwarming story of youthful courage and powerful friendship in a divided nation.

After winning prestigious Liv Ullmann Peace Prize at Chicago in November, 2009, Harun-Arun was conferred with Best Juvenile Audience Award at Dhaka International Film Festival in January last year and Transmedia Critics Jury Award in March the same year.

The film has also travelled to film festivals at Chicago, BamKids-New York, Munich, Stuttgart, Giffoni -Italy, Lamatatena Festival-Mexico, Sri Lanka, RimouskiI–Canada and scheduled for Rio-Brazil, Rohodos-Greece, Iran, Moscow and many festivals to come.
 

MUMBAI: As part of the Maximum India Festival that is being held from 1 to 20 March In Washington DC, three films that include Satyajit Ray‘s Pather Panchali, Ketan Mehta‘s Mirch Masala and Aamir Khan’s Dhobi Ghat will be screened at the John F. Kennedy Centre on the last day. The festival has been featuring dance, music, cinema, literature, theatre and cuisine of India.

Pather Panchali was Ray‘s debut film and the first of his ‘Apu trilogy‘. The film had a universal humanist appeal and dealt with the grim struggle for survival by a poor family. The remaining two films of the trilogy, Aparajito and Apur Sansar, follow Apu as the son, the man and finally the father.

Mirch Masala, set in pre-Independence India, tells the story of a beautiful and confident woman whose husband is away in the city. She spurns the advances of the tax collector, who is known for demanding more than taxes, and flees to a spice factory.

Dhobi Ghat is the story of four different people in the city of Mumbai who get entwined by fate and luck.

Apart from him being present at the screening of his film, Mehta will also be a part of a panel discussion on Indian women in films on 15 March that would be moderated by Nandita Das with Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, director Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Dilip Basu in the panel.

NEW DELHI: Even if anyone had any doubts why these awards are called the Golden Kela awards, the innuendos by witty presenter Cyrus Broacha made this amply clear through his one-liners.

But many of the awards – given according to chief organiser Jatin Varma to the ‘Cream of the Crap/Worst performances’ in Bollywood – did leave many wonder as some appeared to be in absolute contrast to the popular awards given this year by Filmfare, Screen, Zee, the Global Indian Film and TV awards, and so on.

The King Khan – Shah Rukh – and his film ‘My Name is Khan’ which received so much positive critical acclaim were named the worst actor and the worst film, not to forget the acclaimed ‘Guzaarish’ getting the Black Award for Emotional Blackmail and its director Sanjay Leela Bhansali getting the worst director award.

Similarly, the biggest blockbuster of 2010 ‘Dabangg’ received the Ajooba Award for Sheer Awesomeness.

Interestingly, some Bollywood personalities were present on the occasion unlike previous two years when these awards were studiously avoided. They included Vishal Bhardwaj, Abhishek Chaubey (director of ‘Ishqiya’), Habib Faisal (Director of ‘Do Dooni Chaar’), Pradhuman Singh (Noora/Bin Laden from ‘Tere … Bin Laden’) and film critic Mayank Shekhar. They all agreed that Bollywood should be able to take the brickbats with the bouquets, and said the awards were important as they were seen from the standpoint of the viewer.

Over 700,000 viewers (twice that of last year) voted for the awards this year. The event began with the presentation of a report – month-by-month – of the ‘tortures’ inflicted on viewers during 2010.

In fact, in a break with tradition, anti-Kela awards were presented to some for being the saving graces of the year 2010. These were ‘Ishqiya’, ‘Udaan’, ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ and ‘Tere Bin Laden’, ‘Love Sex aur Dhoka’ and ‘Peepli Live’ which were apparently the only films that pleased the ‘Kela Committee‘ this year!

Actor Sonam Kapoor was named the worst female actor for ‘Aisha’, the Chimpoo Kapoor Award for no-talent relative of a celebrity to Uday Chopra, the ‘Baawra Ho Gaya Hai Ke (Have you gone mad?) Award to Sir Ben Kingsley for ‘Teen Patti’, the ‘3 Idiots Childbirth Sequence Award‘ which was awarded to the entire film ‘Prince’, and the Sonu Nigam award for Career Suicide to Sukhwinder Singh for his acting debut and the lyric ‘Kucjh Kariye’. The worst supporting actor awards went to Arjun Rampal for ‘Housefull’, and Kangana Ranaut for ‘Kites’. Jackie ‘Dada’ Shroff received the award for Worst Casting Ever for enacting Shirdi Sai Baba in ‘Maalik Ek’.

The worst debutante awards for male and female went to Aditya Narayan for ‘Shaapit’ and Pakhi Tyrewala for ‘Jhoota Hi Sahi’, which also received the award for having the most atrocious lyric ‘Cry Cry Kitna Cry’. The most irritating song award went to ‘Pee loon’ from ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai’.

Other ‘special‘ awards were the Worst Trilogy ever in the History of Film which went to the ‘grossly unfunny’ ‘Golmaal’ series which had won awards in the last two Kela awards as well, and the ‘Bas Kijiye Bahut Ho Gaya Award’ for filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma.

‘Lafange Parinday’ received the Jajantaram Mamantram Award for Worst Named Film, while the ‘When Did This Come Out’ award went to the film ‘EK Second – Jo Zindagi Badal De’. ‘Dunno Y – Na Jaane Kyun’ received the Lajja Award for the worst treatment of a serious issue. ‘Action Replayy (Back to the Future)’ received award for the Most ‘Original’ story while ‘Baru the Wonder Kid’ was named the worst animated film of 2010.

The awards – given for the third year – are patterned on the Raspberry or Razzie Awards of Hollywood. Varma who heads Twenty Onwards Media recently organised the First Annual Indian Comic Convention which attracted over 20,000 people over two days at the Delhi Haat in the capital.

The meet brought together writers, illustrators, artists, gamers, and producers of animation programmes, games, and films on a common platform. Over 50 participants in around 30 stalls took part.

Varma told indiantelevision.com that he had made up his expenditure of Rs 1.5 to Rs two million, despite the fact that he had not issue any advertisements on the print or electronic media.
 

MUMBAI: Bowing to the Indian film producers and distributors grouse regarding the multiple tax structure the film industry faces by way of varying structures of entertainment tax by various state governments, the Rajasthan government has declared 100 per cent exemption on entertainment tax in all theatres in the state.

The exemption has been made effective from 9 March.

With this exercise, Rajasthan becomes the first state to exempt theatres from entertainment tax.

In March 2009, the Rajasthan government started levying entertainment tax of 23.08 per cent on gross and 30 per cent on net sales. Earlier in 2008, the government had reduced the entertainment tax from 40 per cent on net to 30 per cent on net sales.

Entertainment tax structure in India varies across states and is the highest in Uttar Pradesh at 60 per cent. In Maharashtra, entertainment tax was reduced by five per cent in 2005 and now stands at 45 per cent.

In another measure, the Urban Development Tax, also applicable to cinema properties, has been reduced by 50 per cent in towns with population of less than one lakh.
 

MUMBAI: The Assam Assembly elections due to be held in two stages on 4 and 11 April has compelled the organisers of the 1st Guwahati International Short Film Festival (GISFF) to push back the event by a month. It will now be held on 2 and 3 May.

Accordingly, the deadline for sending entries to the festival has also been extended till 20 March.

The short film competition, organised by Shamiana & Creovaent Shorts, is restricted only to filmmakers from North-East Region of India for the first year. However, short filmmakers from other parts of the country can submit their entries for the Indian Kaleidoscope section.

In the competition section, short films will be awarded under these categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Cinematography.

The best film will win a Golden Rhino Certificate and Cash Award. The organisers will screen the film all over India.
 

MUMBAI: After doing Hindi films like Kajraare, Aap Kaa Surroor – The Real Luv Story, Karzzzz and Radio, Himesh Reshammiya has turned to international films and is doing an English film.

The singer, actor is doing A * Is Killed produced by Arifilms and directed by Christophe Lenoir, based in France.

Reshammiya was selected by the makers as it was felt that he suited the character of Sidharth Patel, who is supposed to be an Indian musician absolutely mesmerised by a superstar who is killed under mysterious circumstances. How the truth behind the superstar‘s murder unfolds forms the crux of the story.

This thriller in English will also have music by Reshammiya.