Film carnival to begin on Mar 14

Chennai, Mar 12 (UNI) A four-day film carnival titled 24 Frames will be organised by the Department of Communication at Madras Christian College here from March 14 to 17 in which big names on and off the screen will be present in strength.

Popular film actor Rohini will inaugurate the festival at a preview theatre at Kodambakkam in the city where a movie club F-stop will also be launched.

With a catalogue of more than 1,200 Indian and international films and documentaries, the F-stop will be an exclusive club for media and film students.

In an attempt to promote meaningful cinema among the youth and college-goers, globally popular films like Abbas Kiarostami's Where is my Friend's Home?; Pickpockets (by Robert Bresson); Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot); My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard); Rhapsody in August (Akira Kurosawa); and Not one Less (Zhang Yimou), among others, will be screened at the festival, according to college sources.

The sources said the focus will be on lesser-known works of all-time great directors like Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak Charulata and contemporary films by Mira Nair and other popular directors which normally do not become available in the regular circuits.

There will be short lectures in between the screening of films and documentaries. In the Classic section, films like The Legend of 1900 and Casablanca will be screened.

'We are going online completely from registration to cataloguing of all our films, with a synopsis on each film and its director in our collection.

'We are also trying to upload a comprehensive filmography on the web for all the film freaks out there,' said Mr Dinesh, creator of the website: www.fstop.in.

UNI