Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: Though Arbaaz Khan’s film Dabaang has won the maximum awards in the three awards function gone by (Screen, Apsara and Zee Cine awards), Shemaroo Entertainment and Vishal Bharadwaj’s Ishqiya comes second going by the fact that it has won eight awards totally in all the three awards.

After winning four Star Screen Awards, the Abhishek Chaubey directed film went on to bag two awards at the Apsara Awards and an equal number at the Zee Cine Awards. 

Ishqiya is a romantic thriller that moves around the dark emotions of the three leading characters – Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi. The chemistry of the characters, their passion, their love, sense of revenge and hatred kept the audience glued to their seat making the film one of the biggest entertainers of this year.

Said producer Raman Maroo, “It’s an honour to receive these prestigious awards. It gives a lot of encouragement to know that your work and efforts are liked and appreciated by people. We are thankful to jury for giving us the awards. Ishqiya has just started its counting of awards, there are still many more surprises coming.”

Co-producer Vishal Bhardwaj averred “The excitement began with the kick off of award season this year and with four more awards in hand today we are thrilled. We thank the jury members

MUMBAI: After breaking professional ties with Shah Rukh Khan and dissolving their company Dreams Unlimited, Juhi Chawla returns to produce films this time with producers Onir and Sanjay Suri.

According to Onir, Chawla, who was also playing a role in the film, was helping them raise investors for his upcoming film I Am for some time now. Midway, Chawla expressed her desire to join Onir and Suri as an associate producer. “Her addition to our team would be an asset, “ says Onir.

I Am has Chawla in a major role with Manisha Koirala. She plays a Kashmiri pandit in one of the four stories in the film.

The association of Onir and Chawla go back a long way. She starred in two films directed by Onir namely My Brother Nikhil and Bas Ek Pal.

MUMBAI: Actor filmmaker Michael Douglas, who has successfully combated throat cancer, has shown his keenness on re-starting his delayed Indian project, Racing The Monsoon.

A thriller about a diamond robbery on the Palace of Wheels luxury train that runs in Rajasthan, the movie is being partly shot in India. Douglas and wife Catherine-Zeta- Jones had identified locations in the state and have a game plan on how to go ahead with the project.
 
The film, which was to start when the effect of recession was waning, suffered a setback when news about Douglas‘s ailment broke out.

Douglas apparently has a double role in the film that also stars Matt Damon.. He has already roped in action director Alan Amin and set designer Nitin Desai for his project.

Douglas, whose last film was Wall Street: The Money Never Sleeps, was doubtful of making it ever in the fields of acting and making films. But now that he is hale and hearty, he wants to make a comeback.
 

MUMBAI: Filmmaker Prashant Bhargava’s feature film Patang (The Kite) has been selected to be screened as part of the 41st Forum in this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

A co-production between India and USA, the film is a drama set in the backdrop of India’s largest kite festival in Ahmedabad.

The Forum will present a total of 39 films in the main programme and six films as special screenings of which 24 films would have their world premieres. 

The Forum is considered to be the most experimental section of the Berlinale that presents original, provocative and disturbing cinema.

In addition, eight films will be shown from the creative period of the Japanese director Shibuya Minoru.

The Berlin Film Festival will take place from 10 to 20 February.
 

MUMBAI: Veteran Bengali actress Gita Dey, who worked under seasoned directors like Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, passed away in a private hospital on Monday following prolonged illness. She was 79.

Beginning as a child artiste at the age of six, Dey was associated with the Bengali stage and the silver screen for over seven decades. She was chosen by Ray for his film Samapti that was part of the trilogy, Teen Kanya. 

Her performance as the mother of the main protagonist in Ghatak‘s masterpiece Meghey Dhaka Tara is still remembered. She also acted in Ghatak’s ‘Komal Gandhar and Subarnarekha.

With Tapan Sinha she acted in films like Haatey Baajarey, Jotugriha and Ekhonee. Late in her life, she also played character roles in television soaps.

Dey is survived by her two sons and a daughter.

MUMBAI: Following the non-participation of its brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan in the last year’s International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards in Sri Lanka, the Academy has done away with the concept of having a brand ambassador. That means that Bachchan will not be the brand ambassador of the event at Canada in this year’s awards function.

Clarifying the matter ,Wizcraft Entertainment director Sabbas Joseph said in a statement, “Due to unexplainable reasons, Bachchan couldn‘t participate in the IIFA Weekend in Sri Lanka last year. His reason for non-participation is best known to him. Following this, IIFA aborted the concept of a Brand Ambassador. Keeping in mind the huge respect that Wizcraft and IIFA have for Mr. Bachchan and the deep relationship that we‘ve always shared, we are not having anyone replace Mr. Bachchan.”

“The Bachchan family has been an intrinsic part of IIFA every year and in this regard we have already shared with them a proposal about their participation this year too. IIFA and Mr.Bachchan are inseparable. We will continue to pursue his participation for this year too,‘ Joseph added.

Wizcraft entertainment organises IIFA every year while Bachchan has been the brand ambassador of the IIFA awards since its inception in 2000.
 

NEW DELHI: A Festival of silent films from Austria is being held this week in Delhi.

The festival has been organised by the Federation of Film Societies of India North Zone in collaboration with the Austrian Culture Forum and the Indian International Centre on 20 and 21 January.

The package consists of early classic silent films like ‘Cafe Electrik‘ starring Marlene Deitrich and Willi Forst, ‘Sodom and Gommorah‘, ‘Virtue‘ and ‘Moon of Israel‘, two short films starring Cocl and Seff who inspired later the Laural and Hardy films and three early advertisement shorts.

The package is presented by Gerhard Gruber, eminent curator of early Austrian cinema and himself a cinematographer. He will introduce the film packages daily and hold discussions with the audiences at the end of the screenings.
 

MUMBAI: Renowned filmmaker Govind Nihalani today said there was urgent need to assess the impact of films and other initiatives taken for creating a greater awareness among the general public about the problems of the disabled.

Inaugurating the 8th edition of the first of its kind travelling educational film festival, the We Care Filmfest 2011 on Disability Issues in Mumbai, he expressed the hope that the Tata Institute for Social Sciences which had a disability centre would help in this regard.

He said it would be interesting to know if the festival, which had been held since 2003, had in fact made any impact on the institutions where it was held or on the people who had come and seen the films.

He said that the We Care FilmFest was the only festival in the world which was travelling to educational institutions including mass communications institutes and disability institutions.

Speaking at the function held at the YB Chavan Centre here, United Nations Information Centre for India and Bhutan National Information Officer Rajiv Chandran made a call for corporates and others to come forward to support the venture financially if it had to grow, since it was presently been run solely by Brotherhood, the non-governmental organisation which had launched it.

He said the UNIC had decided to recognise the Festival since it lived up to the aspirations of the Convention passed by the United Nations in May 2008 on the rights of the Disabled.

Renowned ad filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar said that parents did not often recognise a disability – especially if it was mental – early enough to take action to check it. He said that he had cone across many cases where a child was prevented from doing what he wanted just because the parents did not realise his aspirations. He hoped the Festival would correct such misunderstanding and bring about greater awarness.

Festival founder Director Satish Kapoor said he had started the Festival in a very small manner but the response had encouraged him to take it all over the country. He said this year the Festival may travel to all the SAARC countries under the auspices of UNESCO, and had also been invited to Turkey. The Festival had received films from all over the world.

This year a total number of 67 documentary films in four categories – up to one minute, up to five minutes, up to 30 minutes, and up to 75 minutes – from India and from various other countries like the USA, Canada, Israel, the UK, Indonesia, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Nepal etc. are being exhibited. 

Senior Consultant (Media) B B Nagpal said this was not a festival, but a mission through cinema to create greater awareness. He said an impaired person may be disabled, but the society as a whole was often handicapped because it failed to understand that the disabled did not want pity, but equal opportunity. He hailed the move by Bombay High Court Chief Justice Mohit Desai in holding a meeting with NGOs and government officers in Mumbai last week and recommending that disability should form part of the MBBS Course.

Sandeep Marwah of the Asian Academy of Film and Television said he had supported the venture from its very first year because of the importance it gave to creating awareness and for reflecting only disabled achievers in the films shown.

Rao Saheb Shekhawat, MLA Amravati; and director and story-teller Amole Gupte were also present among others. The Filmfest was launched in the presence of various local partners – both government and non-governmental – of Mumbai including the Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped, (AYJNIHH), the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), the SNDT Women‘s College,the ADAPT, the Helen Kellar Institute for Deaf & Deaf-blind and Trinayani- working on Disability Awareness and Support. Cinema Lovers is online partner and promoting the film festival through web. Other partners are Apang Jeevan Vikas Sansthan, Amarvati, Chetna Apangmati Vikas Sansthan, Kolhpur and Svyam, Thane.

The We Care Filmfest on Disability Issues was launched by Delhi-based non-governmental organisation Brotherhood in 2003 and has become a brand when it comes to film festivals on disability, both nationally and internationally. The Festival is unique in nature, as it is a travelling film festival which will travel to 25 venues across India after the Mumbai launch. Its founder partners are the United Nations Information Centre for India and Bhutan (UNIC), UNESCO, the National Trust which functions under the Social Empowerment Ministry, and the Asian Academy of Film and Television (AAFT).

A Preview Committee meeting held at Marawah Studios, Noida and at the AYJ National Institute of Hearing Handicapped, Mumbai, selected 28 documentary films for the 8th edition of the We Care Filmfest.

MUMBAI: Cause Entertainment is co-producing its maiden film, A First Class Man, with UK-based Picture Palace Productions.

Cause Entertainment, a fund established to invest in socially conscious movies, is fully financing the mid-budget English language film. Picture Palace Productions will provide production help for the movie which is being partly shot in the UK.

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, the movie is based on the life of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Based on the play of the same name by David Freeman, the film follows the life of Tamil Nadu-born Ramanujan (1887-1920), who had no formal education but devised mathematical theories that were years ahead of his time. He was invited to Cambridge by mathematician G.H. Hardy who was astounded by the content of Ramanujan‘s Note books when he posted them from Chennai.

Spottiswoode has directed films like And The Band Played On, Air America and the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. His last feature, The Children of Huang Shi, was a Sino-Australian co-production that filmed in China starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Radha Mitchell.

Ramanujan has already been the subject of several books and plays but this project marks the first time his life has been depicted in a feature film. The film will also be used as a platform for social action initiatives in the area of education that are being devised by the team at Cause Entertainment.

The film, now in the pre-production stage, will start rolling in May. While the first schedule will take place in the UK, the star cast and crew will return to India for the second schedule.

Cause Entertainment‘s Vicky Dhir is one of the three principal directors of the fund along with Aditya Mehta and former Sony executive Uday Singh. The fund also has two advisory boards – a creative board including filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap, Prahlad Khakkar and Aparna Sen, and a corporate board including executives such as Alex Kuruvilla, Sony Entertainment CEO Manjit Singh, Rajat Jain and Bobby Bedi.
 

MUMBAI: The Quebec Government has tied up with three Indian entities to organise ‘Quebec Films Festival‘ in Mumbai from 28 to 31 January at the YB Chavan Centre.

The festival, organised in collaboration with the YB Chavan Centre, Federation of Film Societies in India (FFSI) and Prabhat Chitra Mandal, will screen a selection of films from that country that include C.R.A.Z.Y. (28 Jan), The Dog who stopped the War, I Killed My Mother, The Fight and Continental -A Film Without Guns (all 29 Jan), I Remember and Mommy is at the Hairdresser‘s (30 Jan) and Seducing Doctor Lewis (31 Jan).

Besides the festival, Prabhat Chitra Mandal will also release a Marathi book titled ‘Satyajit Ray Aani Bhartiya Manvantar‘ written by Dr. Shyamala Vanarase. This will be followed by the screening of two documentaries on the career of Satyajit Ray – Satyajit Ray and Goshta Pather Panchalichi. The event will be held at Dadar Matunga Cultural Centre on 3 February.