Showing posts with label Film Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film Festival. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

"Was this film funded by ISI?"

That was what one TV journalist asked to P T Kunhi Mohammed, the director of Malayalam film `Paradesi' at a meet the press program organized in connection with a screening of the film.

Could be he was trying to act smart, or just being stupid. But it kind of explains the film's absence from Indian Panorama at Goa festival.

(Paradesi illustrates the fate of the partition's in-betweens who face continuous torture from both Paki and Indian states. Escorting the guys all the way to the border and leaving them in No Man's land and all.. We have seen many partition films -- recently 1947 Earth and Khamosh Pani -- but this post-partition film set in 2007 is not a repeat of those. I remember newspaper reports about one Pak citizen dying in our district a few years back after running between the countries for decades. As Mohanlal said at the screening, this could happen in any place in the world where there's conflict. . The film has a haunting effect, despite dragging at some places. And some good music.)

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Sad website for Cannes :-(



I was trying to check out the films in Competition and other sections at Cannes film festival. So I go to the official website of Festival de Cannes and get disappointed. The schedule of screenings is up, but many links lead you to this page that says "The content you have requested will be online soon. Please come back and check our site regularly."

For example, "In Competition" page (under "Official Selection") says "
Each year, about twenty feature films are selected to be in Competition and in the running for the Palme d'Or. They make up the main part of the Official Selection which is screened at the Grand Theatre Lumière.

Click here to see the full 2007 list."

You click and you are told "the content will be online soon". This holds for all sections under "Official Selection" and also to many other links on the festival page.

This is on May 17. GMT 4:27pm. The festival is from May 16 to 27, 2007.

This when they are celebrating 60 years of movies. The festival 2007 page boasts that "
2007 is not just any year for the Festival de Cannes, as not only do we reflect on sixty years of movie-making history but also look forward to what the future of film holds."

[Festival logo source: wikipedia]