ITV

Category: Hindi

  • Shemaroo releases Samsara on home video

    MUMBAI: After launching in 60 countries, Pan Nalin‘s Samsara is now ready to allure the Indian audience. Shemaroo Entertainment Pvt Ltd, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, USA, has released the film on home video.

    The Samsara DVD and VCD are priced at Rs 349 and Rs 149 respectively.


    Starring Christy Chung, Neelesha BaVora, Tenzin Tashi and Shawn Ku, Samsara is a winner of 30 international awards.


    The DVD of Samsara contains added features which include the director‘s interview, behind-the-scenes footage and soundtrack. Also adding value to this packaging is a booklet that contains the synopsis, director‘s statement, making-of-the-film, director‘s and crew biography.


    Shemaroo Entertainment director Hiren Gada stated, “We are delighted to launch Samsara on VCDs and DVDs. It is a beautiful film which has won several accolades internationally. It is our effort to bring in internationally successful masterpieces into the Indian market.”

  • Mirchi Movies, Maverick Productions to co-produce Aloo Chaat

    MUMBAI: Mirchi Movies Limited is co-producing Robby Grewal‘s Aloo Chaat with Anuj Saxena‘s Maverick Productions. The film starring Aftab Shivdasani and Aamna Shariff (of Kahi To Hoga fame) went on floors on Monday (25th February). The shooting will be in Mumbai & Delhi.


    Mirchi Movies Limited COO Munish Purii stated, “Aloo Chat is based on a terrific family-comedy script and the film‘s story has all the elements of universal appeal. This film will release sometime after summer 2008.”


    The technical team of Aloo Chaat comprises Sanjay Kapoor as the DoP, editor Aarif Sheikh, who had previously worked on films like Samay, Maqbool and Omkara, and RDB and Samirrudin, who would be scoring songs for the film.


    Maverick Productions CEO Anuj Saxena stated, “Maverick is delighted to partner with Mirchi Movies and both will work together to produce an impactful film. Maverick has recently completed three successful years in the industry and has a wide portfolio ranging from TV shows, films, awards show, documentaries and advertisements and we surely intend to make more movies in coming months”.


    Mirchi Movies, a subsidiary of Times Infotainment Media, has around 12-15 feature films in its kitty that will release over the next 3 years. The company has three movies that stand nearly completed – Hari Puttar-A Comedy of Terrors (Hindi), Vellitherai (Tamil) and Manjadikuru (Malayalam).

  • UTV wins case against MP govt

    MUMBAI: UTV Motion Pictures has finally emerged victorious in the case against Madhya Pradesh government‘s ban on Jodhaa Akbar.


    “The Madhya Pradesh High Court has ruled in favour of UTV and we are commencing the screening of Jodhaa Akbar immediately across the state. This is a huge boost to all advocates of creative freedom in our country, and we are very grateful to the court for recognising the validity of our stand and allowing Jodhaa Akbar to resume screenings,” said UTV Motion Pictures director Siddharth Roy Kapur.


    Within a span of two weeks, since the date of its release, UTV‘s Jodhaa Akbar had fallen prey to a huge web of communal controversies. Apart from being banned in Rajasthan, Ambala and parts of Gujrat and Bihar, the film also faced temporary suspension in MP following demonstrations against it by the Rajput community at cinema theatres. This made UTV move the MP High Court to get the order revoked leading to their final win.

    So far, the Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai Bachchan-starrer period love story has succeeded in collecting a gross amount of Rs 527 million in India. In the US, it has raised around Rs 100 million while in the UK it has earned around Rs 56 million.


    MP follows Rajasthan, bans UTV‘s Jodhaa-Akbar

    UTV moves Madhya Pradesh High Court against ban order

  • Kannada film fraternity mulls production halt over subsidies, ent tax issues

    BANGALORE: The Kannada film fraternity has threatened to call for a stoppage of all production work starting 28 February 2008 over the entertainment tax on remakes and subsidies issues. However, there are no plans to stop screening of films as yet.

    Earlier, the industry withdrew its call for a statewide strike that was to be held on 14 February, after talks with government officials who assured them that the entertainment tax issue would be looked into during the state‘s budget. The industry is also demanding benefits for Kannada film remakes.


    The Kannada film industry is much smaller than the film industries of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The annual investments in Kannada films are about Rs 2 billion – about one fifth of the investment in the Telugu and Tamil film industry.


    Last year, 98 Kannada films, including remakes, were made. To protect original Kannada films, since 1966, the state government has been granting entertainment tax exemptions, besides which original Kannada films are also eligible for subsidies and awards.


    Annually, the state government spends around Rs 35 million towards subsidies. The subsidies are offered to 30 films, the maximum subsidy amount being Rs one million per movie, besides which two children‘s films per year are granted subsidies of Rs 2.5 million each.


    At present, exhibitors in Karnataka have to pay entertainment tax (40 per cent of the cost of the tickets sold) for screening of remakes and non-Kannada films. According to reports, last year, the state government collected around Rs 560 million towards entertainment tax from exhibitors of remakes and non-Kannada films.

    In the case of a Kannada hit film Krishna, in October 2007, the government had exempted it from the payment of entertainment tax, since the producer had declared it as an original movie.. Consequently, the exhibitors did not collect any tax while screening this film.


    However, some time ago, a Tamil film producer approached the Tamil Film Chamber alleging that Krishna was a remake of his Tamil film Unnai Ninnathen. Hence, towards the end of December 2007, the Karnataka commissioner of information issued an order staying the entertainment tax exemption given to Krishna and seven other Kannada films. The officials of the commercial tax department have been pressing the exhibitors of these films to pay entertainment taxes that they have not collected – this amounts to between Rs 1 million to Rs 1.5 million, according to industry sources.


    The Kannada film industry is undecided on whether offering of sops to remakes will be a positive or a retrograde step. Some industry pundits feel that all Kannada films should be exempt from entertainment tax, irrespective of the fact that a film is an original Kannada one or a remake. Others feel that only original Kannada films should be exempted from entertainment tax to help creative directors without resources take up filmmaking.

  • Give industry status to film distribution, exhibition biz: Assocham

    NEW DELHI: The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) feels that the government should exempt the transactions between film producers and distributors and those between distributors and exhibitors from service tax as the sector is already burdened with various types of taxes.

    Furthermore, the levy of Value Added Tax (VAT) by the state governments at the instance of the central government should be scrapped.


    Assocham said the guidelines issued by the Reserve Bank of India on 14 May 2001 pursuant to the grant of industry status to the film industry on 16 October 2000 had completely ignored the distribution and exhibition sectors and, therefore, bank finance was being made available only to the production sector. Although organisations of the film industry had appealed for removal of this anomaly from time to time, the government had not paid heed.


    There was need for encouraging flow of special funds from government and the corporate sector to provide support to eminent film makers for development of regional culture. Grants from central government should be given to encourage regional films.



    In the wake of amendments in the Finance Act 2007, service tax had been made applicable in case of renting/leasing, letting immovable property which includes theatres, exhibition halls and multiple use buildings with the result that the Central Excise Departments issued notices for recovery of service tax.



    The VAT rates imposed at the instance of the centre differ from State to State from 4 per cent to 12 per cent. “The irony of this tax is that it cannot be passed on to the last person i.e. the cinegoer with the result that it ends at the distributor who even after making huge investment in buying the film is unsure as to whether he would be able to recover his investment and over and above he has to pay VAT despite his film flops. The Film Distribution is an unpredictable business and is the only segment where a purchaser is given guarantee of a product without actually verifying its contents.

  • ‘Coen Brothers’ ‘No Country for Old Men’ wins big at Oscars

    MUMBAI: After chasing it for 11 years, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen have finally won the coveted Best Director Oscar for No Country for Old Men. The Coen Brothers had earned the Best Screenplay award for Fargo in 1997.


    “Joel and I have been making stories with a movie camera since we were kids. What we do now doesn‘t feel that much different from what we did then,” said Ethan Coen while recieving the award for best direction along with his brother, making them the first siblings to win the award.


    The violent thriller has emerged as the biggest winner at the 80th Oscar function, taking home awards for the best picture, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Javier Bardem.


    The film, which has earned over $64 million at the domestic box office and $30 million overseas, is the 12th movie co-written and directed by the Coen brothers.


    A bleak and gory drama, No Country For Old Men has beat out its arch rivals Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for the win.


    While French Lady Marion Cotillard sweeped the best actress‘ award for La Vie En Rose, British actor Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor‘s award for There Will be Blood.


    “Thank you life. Thank you love. It is true, there are some angels in this city; thank you so much,” said an ecstatic Cotillard looking at the prized possession in her hand.


    While the award for best supporting actor went to Spain‘s Javier Bardem for his performance as a psychopathic hitman in No Country for Old Men, Britain‘s Tilda Swinton, who played a calculating corporate legal chief in Michael Clayton, bagged a best supporting actress Oscar.


    “Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough to think that I could do that and put one of the most horrible haircuts in history on my head,” said Bardem.


    Austria‘s The Counterfeiters won the best foreign film award which is based on a true story of a group of Jewish prisoners recruited by the Nazis to mount one of the largest counterfeiting operations in history.


    Though Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood got nominated in eight categories, it could take home only two awards – for cinematography and best actor.


    The Bourne Ultimatum, which was not nominated for a single major award, walked out with three Oscars in the technical categories.


    To remind the world of all its bleak realities, the jury gave away the Oscar to Alex Gibney‘s Taxi to the Dark Side, for the best documentary.


    The film revolves around the interrogation and grilling techniques at US military facilities, investigating the death of Dilawar, a young Afghan taxi driver in custody, at a prison in Afghanistan in 2002.


    While collecting his Oscar, Gibney said, “This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father, a navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury at what was being done to the rule of law.”

  • MAMI’s 10th International Film Festival to screen 140 films

    MUMBAI: The tenth edition of the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image‘s (MAMI) International Film Festival will kick off on 6 March. Presented by Reliance Big Entertainment, the festival will screen 140 films from 45 countries.


    This year, the festival has introduced a Global Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be given to an international director for his/her contribution to the world cinema.


    The festival is also introducing a short film competition called “Dimensions Mumbai,” for which digital films of five minutes‘ durations depicting various aspects of life in Mumbai are being invited. The age of the participants should be 25 years or less. The best entry would be awarded a cash prize of Rs 150,000, initiated by Jaya Bachchan, who is also one of the trustees of MAMI.


    The opening gala night will mark the screening of Polish master Andrzej Wajda‘s latest film Katyn, nominated for an Oscar in the foreign film category. Premiered at the 58th Berlin Film Festival, Katyn will now witness the grand Asian premiere of the film.


    On the closing gala night, The Mourning Forest, a Japanese film that won the Grand Prix at the 60th edition of Cannes Film Festival in 2007, will be screened.


    The Global Lifetime Achievement Award will be conferred on the Spanish director Carlos Saura, for his outstanding contribution to cinema. Saura is the filmmaker in focus whose eight films including Carmen will be screened at the festival.


    The Lifetime Achievement Award will be given to Dharmendra and Rishi Kapoor will be honoured with the Award for Significant Contribution to Cinema over 25 years while lyricist Gulzar will receive an Award for Outstanding Contribution to Indian Film Music and Hitendra Ghosh will be presented with the Kodak Award for Technical Excellence.


    The festival will have a special screening of To Each of His Own Cinema, a film made by 25 world-renowned directors to celebrate 60 years of Cannes Festival in 2007.


    It will feature retrospective of Ritwik Ghatak and Andrzej Wajda, whose film Kanal is celebrating its 50th year.


    The Italian silent film Pinocchio (1911) restored by Cineteca will be another attraction of the festival. The film, based on Collodi‘s famous novel, will be screened with live music. The screening is sponsored by the Italian Consulate of Mumbai.

  • 30 filmmakers to train at Osian’s 5th Talent Campus

    NEW DELHI: About 30 young aspiring filmmakers from India and neighbouring South Asian countries and Iran will take part in the 5th edition of the Talent Campus being organised by Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art along with the 10th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema in New Delhi.


    Organised in collaboration with Berlinale Talent Campus, Berlin International Film Festival and Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, Talent Campus India is held within the framework of the programme “Infrastructure Building for Minds and Markets” (IBM2).



    The 10th Osian’s-Cinefan is taking place in New Delhi from 10 to 20 July.


    At Talent Campus India, selected aspiring filmmakers will be invited to New Delhi for a workshop from 13 to 18 July to interact with renowned filmmakers and film professionals from India and abroad.



    The aim of the workshop is to provide Indian and South Asian youth a forum for learning and sharing the process of filmmaking. Participants will benefit not only from the competence and experience of the professionals involved, but also from an exchange of ideas amongst themselves. Areas of discussion will include screenplay writing, adaptation of novel, direction and understanding key issues such as audience and genre. In addition to attending seminars and workshops, the selected talents will have the opportunity to see the very best of Asian cinema being showcased during the 10th Osian’s-Cinefan.



    The applicants will be required to submit either a one-minute or a five-minute film directed by them on the subject Everyday Journeys or a 3,500-4,500 word film script. An independent committee will make the final selection of the participants to attend the final workshop.


    The deadline for applications is 10th May and the application form along with other specifications is available on the official Osian website – www.osians.com. Alternatively, queries could also be sent to talentcampusindia@osians.com.



    While Cinefan began in 1999 as a small festival of Asian Cinema with some 27 films, it was acquired by and merged into Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art and became Osian’s-Cinefan in 2004 with the sixth edition.

  • Eros bags Amity Corporate Excellence Award

    MUMBAI: The Indian arm of Eros International was awarded the Amity Corporate Excellence Award at Amity International Business School‘s Tenth International Conference – INBUSH (International Business Horizon) 2008.

    The award is based on the results of a survey conducted by a team of students and faculty from Amity Business School, identifying strengths and core competencies of leading corporates across different sectors in India.


    The citation by the institute stated, “The award has been bestowed on Eros for having achieved the enviable position of one of the best and most admired business organisations with its unparalleled performance. It is a matter of great pride that the company rather than resting on past laurels keeps pushing itself to achieve greater heights.”


    A high-level jury comprising industrialists, scholars and academicians evaluated the findings. Some key parameters were: understanding of organizational structure; employee strength; business code of conduct; corporate social responsibility; employee welfare schemes, etc.


    “The Corporate Excellence Award received by Eros is a reflection of the humble contribution we have been able to make towards the overall corporatisation of the Indian entertainment sector and the solidarity of the Eros team towards our common goal,” said Eros International India President Sunil Lulla.

  • Films transcend boundaries, create cultural affinity

    NEW DELHI: The first-ever festival of films from countries on the shores of the Indian Ocean got underway here with Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma referring to the power of cinema to transcend the political boundaries and barriers of language.

    He called upon the film industry to find ways of finding a mechanism to get commercial release of all countries making good films, irrespective of language. He said there was urgent need to learn from each other about the cultural practices to bring people closer, and no medium could do this better than cinema. India had already proved in its global reach through its films that creativity brings people together. Films, he said, had a motivating influence and an uplifting experience.



    Information and Broadcasting Ministry secretary Asha Swarup said festivals of this kind could lead to greater cultural exchanges between the countries of the region.


    She said that the Indian film industry was growing at an average rate of 16 per cent every year, and the government had facilitated this by permitting 100 per cent FDI along with industry status, and she hoped this would also lead to more co-productions.



    Ambassador of Iran Syed Mahdi Nabizadeh and current president of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) said the objective of the association was to provide a common platform for cooperation. The exchange of films would also help enhance this cooperation. A good film should exhibit the life of the country it represents and show the factual position.



    In her welcome address, the director of the Directorate of Film Festivals announced that this was the first film event of the year to be followed shortly by festivals of films from Hungary, Australia and China.



    Others present at the inauguration were I&B Joint secretary (Films) VB Pyarelal; secretary (economic matters) in the External Affairs Ministry KC Singh, joint secretary Malay Mishra, and Australian ambassador John McCarthy, apart from Australia’s Stephen Michael Johnson whose film Yolngu Boy on the plight of the Aborigines was the opening film.





    The Directors of the films from Kenya and Tanzania are expected to be present on the concluding day on 1 March.


    The films being screened at the Festival include Yolngu Boy (Australia), Aha! (Enamul Karim Nirjhar – Bangladesh), We are all Good (Bijan Mirbagheri – Iran), Uppalavanna (Sunil Ariyararthna – Sri Lanka), 7/24 Seven Days (Hemun Chetmee – Thailand), Malooned (Bob Nyanja – Kenya), Faith’s Corner (Darrell James Roodt – South Africa), and Tumaini (Beatrix Mugishagwe – Tanzania).



    The Indian film at the festival is the top film of last year, Chak De! India by Shimit Amin and Mauritius has entered a documentary on the Indian migrants to that island nation, From So far – The story of Indian immigration in Maurtius by Alain Gordon-Gentil and David Constantin.