Jamshedpur International Film Festival from Apr 29

Jamshedpur, Apr 11 (UNI) Sixty-two Indian and foreign films will be screened during the ten-day 12th Jamshedpur Film Festival, an annual event of city-based premier cineclub Celluloid Chapter, to be opened here on April 29 with Suman Ghosh's Bengali venture 'Padakhkhep'(footsteps).

According to Celluloid Chapter president Sanjany Chowdhary, film packages from countries like France, Norway, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Canada, Italy, China and Czechoslovakia would be showcased during the festival, to be jointly organised by Tata Steel.

Mr Chowdhary said the Indian panorama section would consist of a package of six Hindi, Bengali and English films of celebrated directors.

'Dosor', a Bengali film by Rituparno Ghosh, would be an added attraction, he said, adding that among Hindi film Nagesh Kukoonor's ''Dor'' and Deepa Mehta's ''Water'' would be screened while ''Being Cyrus'' by Homy Addjania would be the only English movie in this section.

He said apart from feature films, a festival on short and documetary films, first of its kind in the state, would be held on May 6.

The short film festival would be divided in three categores -- Our Film (films by Jharkhand filmmaker), Their Film (films by filmmakers outside Jharkhand) and Special Categories (films from -Film and TV Institute,Pune, and Satyajit Ray Film Institue,Kolkata).

The other highlight of this year's festival would be a retrospective of eminent filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh and a Gender Sensitisation-Women Centric film on May 1, Mr Chowdhary informed.

The Celluloid Chapter maintained its track record of social responsibilty since its inception in 1985 and keeping this in mind,a film appreciation course 'Pen to Lens' for all school children of the steel city would be held from May 4 to 6, he added.

He said the chapter would also organise the film festival in the state capital Ranchi after the Jamshedpur edition was over. The Ranchi festival would, however, be a shorter version and only 10 films, including four Indian and six international films, would be shown, Mr Chowdhary said.

UNI