IFFI to showcase retrospectives on Vijay Anand, Tapan Sinha

New Delhi, Oct 25 (UNI) The opening and closing functions of the IFFI, touted as the country's premier film festival, will now be kept simple and elegant in tune with the practice in most of the prestigious international film festivals.

The focus will be on the opening film and closing films. There will be no entertainment programme at these functions. The awards ceremony will be held at the closing function. This would be followed by the screening of the closing film.

These were among the decisions taken by the Organising Committee for IFFI-2007 at its inaugural meeting here today.

Information and Broadcasting Minister P. R. Dasmunsi, who chaired the meeting, said over the years IFFI had gone from strength to strength and efforts would be made to make it still better.

The committee deliberated on the various issues related to the event and reviewed the state of its preparedness.

Indian Retrospectives will showcase retrospective on the films of Tapan Sinha and Vijay Anand. Homages section will focus on cinematographer K.K. Mahajan, actress Vanamala Devi and music director O.P. Nayyar.

The Indian Panorama will have 21 feature and 15 non-feature films selected by juries, headed by K.S. Sethumadhavan and Arun Khopkar, respectively.

Among the highlights of foreign section are 14 feature films from Asia, Africa and Latin America in the Competition Section. 'Cinema of the World' will have about 60 award winning feature films from 40 countries.

Master Classes, Technical Retrospective, Foreign Retrospectives and Country Focus will be the other features of IFFI-07.

For the first time, a ticketing system has been introduced whereby every delegate will have to book in advance for any films that he/she would like to see. A maximum of three tickets for every delegate and five for every mediaperson will be issued.

The delegate registration fee for late registration has been considerably enhanced to Rs. 1000. Students, will however, be given a concession of 50 per cent.

It was pointed out at the meeting that two new theatres with a seating capacity of 300 were being built in the Festival Complex.

Two public theatres are being upgraded and provided with the latest projection facilities, thereby making another 400 seats available for the festival.

The total number of delegates that may be registered has been fixed in proportion to the availability of theatre seats. The Goa government has been requested to screen the applications of local delegates and forward them to the Directorate of Film Festival (DFF) for final approval.

The registration system for all delegates has been made completely on-line. Delegate cards will be prepared well in advance so that there are no long queues at the registration counter.

For the first time, two programmers from the Goa government are to curate for IFFI with separate sections, called 'India 60' which will celebrate India's 60th anniversary with three feature films and two documentary films and a retrospective package on Volker Schlondorff, the eminent German filmmaker.

The Film Market will be organised by NFDC with the participation of CII and FICCI. The NFDC is organising a buyer's lounge and co-production market. FICCI is organising a seminar and master class on animation and visual effects. CII will organise 'The Big Picture' Conference.

A new initiative is being undertaken by NFDC in partnership with DFF where international consultants and experts will advise and work with selected filmmakers to develop scripts of international quality.

Today's meeting was attended, among others, by Goa Minister for Water Resources and Forests Philipe N. Rodrigues, the Goa Chief Secretary and the Director, DFF.

UNI