Instrumental music marks Asian film fest opening

New Delhi, July 16: An enthralling display of instrumental music cast a magical spell on the audience at the Capital's Siri fort auditorium last night as the eighth Film festival of Asian Cinema got under way here with the screening of France-based Indian filmmaker Pan Nalin's 'Valley of Flowers'.

The audience which included a host of celebrities from the Indian and International cinema, watched with awe the melodious display of instrumental music by artists from Jaisalmer as Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit inaugurated the ten-day event, which will showcase to the cinema lovers the best of Asian and Arab cinema.

Organised by Mr Nevile Tuli's Osians Connoiseurs of arts, the Asian film festival will this year screen 120 films from 40 countries in Asia.

Present at the opening ceremony last night were a host of Indian film personalities including actors Manisha Koirala, Meeta Vashisht, Naseeruddin Shah, Milind Soman and Rajat Kapoor, renowned filmmakers Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Bobby Bedi, Anwar Jamal and Pan Nalin and several personalities from the world of international cinema like Taiwanese filmmaker Peggy Chao, Iranian actress Niki Karimi and Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan.

Inaugurating the festival, Mrs Dikshit expressed pride in the fact that the fefstival, which started eight years ago as a small endeavour by Mrs Aruna Vasudev for bringing the best of Asian cinema to Delhi, had today become a huge success.

''I Thank Mr Nevile Tuli and Mrs Aruna Vasudev for bringing the best of Asian cinema to Delhi. It is indeed a great honour for us to host the event in the city,''she said.

The chairman of the Osians Connoiseurs of arts Nevile Tuli said holding of the festival was an endeavour towards building a sensibility among people of Delhi towards cinema as a creative art rather than just a source of entertainment. ''Though Indians are known to be great lovers of cinema, we still have a long way to go before we are able to build a culture for good cinema, which is more than just a source of entertainment,''Mr Tuli said.

Mrs Aruna Vasudev, editor of Cinemaya, who began the Asian film festival in Delhi eight years ago said,''our aim of organising such festivals is to make distributors and exhibitors understand that there exists in India a kind of cinema other than the commercial variety. That this kind of cinema has a huge audience is evident from the huge number of cinema lovers coming to the festival over the years purely for the love of cinema.'' On this occasion, she also announced the awarding of that the Lifetime Achievement award this year will be cofferred on Taiwanese filmmaker and scriptwriter Peggy chao.

Filmmaker Pan Nalin expressed a feeling of elation over the fact that 'Valley Flowers' was being premiered at the Asian film festival, which over the years, had been providing a platform to the best among Asian cinema. Speaking on the sidelines of the opening ceremony, Bollywood actor Manisha Koirala said, this is the first Asian film festival I am attending. I must say I am really happy to see a huge crowd of cinema lovers gathered here to appreciate and savour good cinema.'' She said the huge success and response to the festival showed that Asian cinema has today come of age.

''Many good Indian, Thai, Chinese and Japanese films are today making waves on the International cinematic scene, which is an evidence of the vibrancy of Asian cinema today,''she said.

The festival will feature outstanding cinematic works from Iraq, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

The closing film will be Jafar Panahi's 'Offside' (Iran).

This year's Asian film festival will have ten sections.

Unlike earlier years, when the entry to the film festival was free for the public, this year, the general public will have to pay Rs 20 per ticket to watch the films on show at the festival.

Besides the Indian competition and the Asian competition section, Osian's Cinefan will showcase a clutch of outstanding films in two of its well established sections - Cross cultural encounters (featuring films from different regions of the world) and Arabesque (the latest films from Arab countries) - and a large mosaic displaying the range of work being produced in Asia and India, in Asian Frescoes and Indian Osean respectively.

Another section, 'In Tolerance' features three outstanding documentaries that hold a mirror to the past and the present.

While the jury for the Asian competition section will be headed by award-winning Japanese filmmaker Ryuichi Hiroki, and consist of renowned filmmaker from Hong Kong Stanley Kwan, Chinese filmmaker Xie Fei, Indian filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Indonesian actress Jajang c Noer, the Indian competition jury will be headed by Italian writer-director Italo Spinelli, the other members being award-winning Indian filmmaker Pan Nalin, Egyptian filmmaker Khairy Beshara and Iranian actress Niki Karimi.

The festival will play host to a large number of luminaries from Asian cinema such as Peggy chiao, Jean Claude Carriere, Mark Damon, Xie Fei and Tu Duu Chih Tony Rayns. Besides, a number of Indian film personalities like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shyam Benegal, Naseeruddin Shah, Rekha, Dimple Kapadia, Urmila Matondkar, Konkana Sen Sharma and Gautam Ghose would grace the film festival with a greater participation of mainstream cinema than ever before.

Among the film's featured in the Indian competition section this year are Girish Kesaravalli 'In the Shadow of the dog', Santosh Sivan's 'Eternally Secure', Suman Mukhopadhyay's 'Herbert', Taranjeet Singh's 'It could be You' and Onir's 'Bas Ek Pal'.

Among the other Indian films to be screened at the festival this year, as part of the Indian Osean section, are Rituparno Ghosh's 'Dosar', Homi Adajania's 'Being Cyrus', Rajat Kapoor's 'Mixed Doubles', Anjan Das' 'Faltu' and Rahul Dholakia's 'Parzania'.

This year the film festival will also hold a special screening of Naseeruddin Shah's debut directorial venture 'Yun Hota To Kya Hota' (What If) and Gautam Ghose's 'Yatra'.

Also featured will be a special tribute to filmmakers Ritwik Ghatak and Stanley Kwan which will include films like 'Love Unto Waste', 'Rouge', 'Centrestage', 'Lan Yu' and 'Everlasting Regret' by Stanley Kwan and 'Pathetic Fallacy' (Ajantrik), 'Meghe Dhaka Tara' (The Cloud-capped Star), 'Subarnarekha' and 'Ekti Nadir Naam' (The Name of a river) by Ritwik Ghatak.

The film will have a special section on the Buddha wherein about a dozen films touching upon Buddhism will be screened to commemorate the 2550th anniversary of the birth of the Buddha.

Films like Neten Chokling Rinpoche, Sudipto Sen's 'The Last Monk', Bernado Bertolucci's 'Little Buddha', Franz Osten's 'The Light of Asia', Ho Quang Minh's 'Gone Gone Forever Gone', Nabendu Ghosh's 'Trishagni', Im Kwan Taek's 'Come, Come, Come Upward' and Conrad Rook's 'Siddhartha' will feature in the special section on Buddha titled 'The Middle Path: a Focus on Buddhism Four films from the banner of New Theatres will be screened at the festival, in acknowledegment of their 75th year in the business.

UNI