Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: British Council in collaboration with Saregama India is organising ‘The India Screenwriting Workshop‘ in Goa from 17 – 23 March. The workshop aims at developing and improving the quality of script writing in India.

British Council claims that the workshop will hone the skills of the budding scriptwriters, as industry experts will be mentoring them.

The applications for the workshop are available at Saregama and British Council‘s website. The last date to fill the form is 11 February.

The principal mentors for this workshop will be Monsoon Wedding writer Sabrina Dhawan and Tisch School of Arts‘ associate professor in screenwriting Paromita Vohra who has written the script of Khamosh Pani.

The proposed guests‘ mentors include Shekhar Kapoor, Vishal Bharadwaj, Abbas Tyrewala, John Newbigin, Ian Iqbal Rashid and Saregama India creative director B R Sharan.

Sharan says, “There is immense talent in our country. The objective of the workshop is to give insights on the skills of scripting, screenplay.”

MUMBAI: The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has reached interim agreements with the Film Department and Intermedia. The guild says that it continues to sign agreements with companies that value the essential role writers play in making films, television programmes and content for new media.

WGA West president Patric M Verrone and WGA East president Michael Winship said, “Companies like Intermedia and the Film Department recognise the importance of signing a deal that compensates writers fairly for the work they do. In turn, we have designed an agreement for the entertainment industry that takes into account the economic realities that it faces.”

Intermedia president Linda Benjamin says, “We are pleased that we were able to conclude successful negotiations with the WGA so that we can move forward with our production slate across all media, while being able to provide fair and equitable compensation to the writers now and into the future. In light of this agreement, we will shortly be announcing our updated film and television slate.”

Intermedia Film is a global, independent media enterprise with affiliates in London and Los Angeles organised under Munich-based parent company, IM Internationalmedia AG. The core business of the company consists of the development, financing and distribution of high-quality theatrical films as well as TV productions.

The Film Department is an independent movie finance, production and international sales company founded by former Warner Independent Pictures and Miramax Films president Mark Gill and former Miramax Films EVP and Yari Film Group COO Neil Sacker. With capitalisation of $200 million, the company plans to fully finance and produce six films per year budgeted between $10 and $35 million.

The deal with both companies is similar to agreements the WGA recently reached with Lionsgate, RKO Productions, Marvel Studios, The Weinstein Company, United Artists, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Spyglass Entertainment, MRC, Jackson Bites, Mandate Films and Worldwide Pants.

MUMBAI: Mumbai International Film Festival (Miff) 2008 which starts on 3 February, will be different this year.Though the festival is related to documentary, short and animation films, it will see active participation from stalwarts of the Hindi film industry.

Miff 2008 festival director and Film Division chief producer Kuldeep Sinha says, ‘‘For the first time Bollywood is participating in the festival in a big way.‘‘

Noted director, producer and writer Basu Chatterjee will inaugurate the ‘Homage‘ section, which will screen memorable movies of filmmakers like K Vishwanath, Girish Vaidya and noted cinematographer KK Mahajan, Sinha informed.

Renowned director Jahnu Barua and Jabbar Patel will be present at the inauguration of ‘Glimpses of Films Division‘, which will showcase selected movies made by the directors of Film Division on the entire spectrum of development in India since 1948.

Special package of ‘International Students Films‘ from Whistling Woods will be inaugurated by the Showman of Bollywood Subhash Ghai.

This package will screen the films shown at Pune International Film Festival 2008 as part of the International Students Film Competition.

Films from SAARC countries will be inaugurated by director and producer Mahesh Bhatt while the special package on the legends of cinema called the ‘Film Memoirs‘ will be inaugurated by Yash Chopra, Sinha added.

Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Lt Gen (Retd) SK Sinha will inaugurate the ‘Retrospective‘ on 4 February, where special films on the Second World War will be showcased.

While the inauguration of the ‘Homage‘, ‘Glimpses of Film Division‘ and the student‘s films from Whistling Woods will be on 4 February, films from SAARC countries and ‘Film Memoirs‘ will be inaugurated on 5 February, a release said.

Miff 2008 will have separate sections of films from the SAARC countries, South Africa, and Brazil.

There will be a section called ‘Best of Festivals’ for selected films from some renowned documentary, short and animation film festivals and Oscar winning and nominated films, a retrospective of films by jury members, a section of Classics featuring films of great masters of documentary films which will have movies made by Great Masters like Bert Haanstra, Robert J. Flaherty, Francois Truffaut, Istvan Szabo, Kristof Zanussi and Ritwik Ghatak. This package will be organized with the support of National Film Archive of India.

A Film Memoir shows biographical films made on great filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, and Bimal Roy, while Adult Cartoons is a collection of animation films made for adult viewers by the National Film Board of Canada.

There is a special and rarely seen section on films on the Second World War with rarest film records of the Indian troops in action at various part of the world during Second World War. This will also feature the battle of Britain , Russia and other major incidents of that period. This package is being organized with the help of the Armed Forces Film & Photo Division, Delhi.

There will also be sections for films from the North East and from Jammu and Kashmir, and Glimpses from the archives of the Division, apart from homage to filmmakers who passed away in the recent past.

MUMBAI: The fantasy film Pan‘s Labyrinth, a gothic fairy tale set against the post civil war repression in Spain, has been named the winner of UK punbcaster BBC Four World Cinema Award 2008.

Mexican director Guillermo del Toro flew in from Paris to collect the award from Catherine Deneuve at a ceremony held at the BFI Southbank in London.

Del Toro said, “I am very humbled by the competition and the nominations so I am very happy to have won this award. I am extremely thankful because world cinema seems to be not only about geography of the world out there, but about charting the world within us. Very often people think that the only way to tell the truth is through reality. So I find, by my own experience, irreality is sometimes a better tool to tell the truth.”

The film unfolds through the eyes of Ofelia, a little girl who is uprooted to a rural military outpost commanded by her new stepfather. Powerless and lonely in a place of unfathomable cruelty, Ofelia lives out her own dark fable as she confronts monsters – both other worldly and human.

The film has already picked up a number of international awards, including three Academy Awards and three Baftas.

The award ceremony, hosted by Jonathan Ross and sponsored by Pioneer, will be broadcast on BBC Four on 2 February.

Pan‘s Labyrinth was chosen from a shortlist of five by a panel of judges comprising Christopher Eccleston, Nick Broomfield and Archie Panjabi.

MUMBAI: US film studios Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment have announced that a prime advertising spot for Marvel Studios‘ Iron Man will air during the Super Bowl XLII face-off between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants on 3 February, 2008.

The film will be released on 2 May, 2008.

Marvel.com has aready started to tease the spot. The ad will be available on Apple.com, Marvel.com, and the official Iron Man website at IronManMovie.com. Additional sites, including Yahoo Sports! and ESPN.com, will carry the ad the following day.

Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr. stars as Tony Stark/Iron Man in the story of a kidnapped billionaire industrialist and genius inventor. Using his intelligence and ingenuity, Tony builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes captivity. When he uncovers a nefarious plot with global implications, he dons his powerful armor and vows to protect the world as Iron Man.

The film co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard and Shaun Toub. The film is directed by Jon Favreau.

MUMBAI: Prime Focus has posted a standalone net profit of Rs 58.7 million for the quarter ended 31 December 2007, up 4.96 per cent compared to the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

During the period, standalone revenue grew 48.4 per cent to stand at Rs 220.3 million.

During the quarter, Prime Focus has acquired Post Logic Studios (with offices in Hollywood and New York) and Frantic Films (with offices in Los Angeles, Winnipeg and Vancouver) for a total consideration of $ 43 million. The acquisitions have added to Prime Focus’ global footprint, which previously entailed of six visual effects and post-production facilities across India and four facilities in London.

Prime Focus MD Namit Malhotra said, “With our the recent acquisitions of Frantic Films and Post Logic Studios, the Prime Focus Group now has strategic positioning in the world’s largest entertainment markets viz. US, UK and India. With this incredible talent pool and technology we can easily deliver the best creative and technical services for content companies all over the globe”.

It has launched unsubordinated unsecured foreign currency convertible bonds worth $ 55 million due in 2012. The Bonds will be convertible into ordinary shares of the Company, quoted in Indian Rupees and listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange.

The company has completed post production work of films like Saawariyan, Om Shanti Om and Welcome among others. Besides it has also executed the post production and visual effects work on television commercials like Lenovo, Hero Hondo Hunk, Tata AIG, Bajaj Avenger, Skoda Fabia and Ford Fiesta.

Malhotra added, “This year we will be focusing on further strengthening our global pipeline to deliver unmatched value and service to our customers and become the leading visual effects and post-production service provider in each local market.”

MUMBAI: Eight years since his last direction, Aditya Chopra is back helming a Yash Raj Films (YRF) production.

Even as his directorial debut Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge continues its record-breaking run in its 13th year, Aditya is ready to direct his third film.

After directing his second film, Mohabbatein, back in 2000, Aditya had taken a conscious break from direction to set up and develop India‘s first studio model making YRF a name to reckon with. In the years that followed, YRF, under the keen eye of Aditya, produced such blockbusters as Dhoom, Dhoom 2, Hum Tum, Bunty Aur Babli, Salaam Namaste, Fanaa and Chak De! India. While Aditya was the creative producer in all these films, he even wrote his father Yash Chopra‘s directorial venture Veer-Zaara in 2004, as well as the stories of other films.

Aditya‘s third directorial venture will be titled Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi with Shahrukh Khan in the lead.

In this new film, Aditya will introduce a new girl opposite King Khan. The hunt for the girl is currently in progress.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, to be produced by Yash Chopra, will be written and directed by Aditya Chopra. Shooting for the film will commence in May, and it will release by the end of 2008.

MUMBAI: Jodha Akbar continues to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. The Rajput community who had earlier voiced their objections against alleged historical inaccuracies in the film has once again raised the issue. The Rajput Sabha has said that they will not allow Asutosh Gowariker to release the film unless and until he removes the inaccuracies.

Rajput Sabha head Narendra Singh Rajawat has contended that Gowariker is presenting Jodhabai as Akbar‘s wife, which is factually incorrect, adding that Jodhabai was not the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber as shown in the film.

Jodhabai was the daughter of Motaraja Udai Singh of Marwar and was married to Akbar‘s son Salim alias Jehangir. Mughal king Shahjahan was her son, he explained.

Rajawat said such distortion of historical facts had hurt the feelings of the Rajput community.

The community has also urged the courts to restrain Gowariker from showing Jodhabai as the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber.

He said that the name of Raja Bharmal‘s daughter was Harkabai alias Heera Kunwar.

The Rajput community is all set to boycott the film which is due for a 15 February release.

MUMBAI: The National Film Development Corporation Ltd (NFDC), in collaboration with PVR Cinemas, is all set to release and showcase 14 theatrically unreleased feature films in seven regional languages from 1 February at PVR Cinemas in Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore under the film festival ‘Cinemas of India.‘

This is to promote the award-winning and critically acclaimed films of Indian cinema with the objective of providing quality films to a cross-section of discerning viewers across the country, says a press release.

The films will be from all over the country and made in various Indian languages, including Hindi, English, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kashmiri.

NFDC is also in the process of scrutinising, evaluating and selecting various other films in many other additional languages for theatrical release in India through PVR Cinemas. All the current films will run in PVR theatres simultaneously.

These films, which generally stand a very low chance of a widespread theatrical release, are often missed by cinema-lovers in India.

IFB & D manager Ramakrishnan said, “Our primary goal always has been to plan, promote and organise an integrated and efficient development of the Indian film industry and foster excellence in cinema. We would like to make this an annual affair by partnering with various exhibition chains in the near future and provide discerning cinema across various languages to the Indian audience.”

Some of the films selected for the screening are:

1. 
   

   Swar Mandal, Hindi: director and screenplay by Rajan Khosa

   
   
2. 
   

   Bas Yaari Rakho, Hindi: directed by Gopi Desai

   
   
3. 
   

   Kali Salwaar, Hindi: direction and script by Fareeda

   
   
4. 
   

   Bub, Kashmiri: direction by Jyoti Sarup

   
   
5. 
   

   Mammo, Hindi: directed by Shyam Benegal

   
   
6. 
   

   An Ode to Lost Love, English: direction and screenplay by Madhu Ambat

   
   
7. 
   

   Kuchh Dil Ne Kaha, Hindi: direction and screenplay by Dr Purnima Prabhu
   

All these films range across different genres and have won various national and international accolades at festival circuits globally.

MUMBAI: Shirish Kunder, the director of Jaan-e-Mann and husband of Farah Khan, is all set to begin work on his latest project Tees Maar Khan. After Jaan-e-Mann, Kunder had launched his production house and announced two big-budget films Joker and Prince of India. A thorough action film, Joker has Akshay Kumar in the lead.

News has it that before Kunder starts working on the two films, he has decided to make a quick a comedy called Tees Maar Khan. He has said that Joker, being a big-budget film, is taking time, and the dates, too, are yet to be sorted out. Hence, Tees Maar Khan will precede the other two films. However, the star cast has not been finalised yet. But Kunder informs that it is going to be a single-hero film and that he will start shooting around September 2008.