First-ever film festival in Shimla

Shimla, May 29 (ANI): The curtains on a three-day-long Indian Panorama Film Festival went up at the historic Gaiety theatre in Shimla on Friday.

State Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal inaugurated the festival by lighting the ceremonial lamp.

The festival has been jointly organized by the Directorate of Film Festivals under Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and state Information and Public Relations department.

During the three day festival, 14 films, six feature films and eight non-feature films, will be shown in eight different languages including Hindi, English and other regional languages.

The event aims at providing a platform to all the film lovers to interact with various film personalities and encourage them towards film making.

"Himachal Pradesh who have done well in cinema. But there is no film production activity in a big way. The idea behind having the festival here and getting the film makers is to stimulate and generate interest in film making also," said Bhupendra Kainthila, one of the organizers.

"Festivals like these are very good for us because we do not get the opportunity to view films like these here. We don't get the information regarding what is happening in the film industry, what are the new things and experiments taking place," said Kedar Thakur, a local artiste.

Bollywood actors Rahul Bose, Divya Dutta and Abhishek Pathak along with renowned directors M S Sathya and Devashish Medhekar added glamour to the event. (ANI)