from Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Panaji (GA)
Panaji, Nov 21: The ten-day long extravaganza of films will be inaugurated by veteran actress Rekha on Saturday November 22 evening on the banks of Mandovi river in Goa’s capital city of Panaji.
Union minister of state for information and broadcasting Anand Sharma, Goa Governor S S Sidhu, chief minister Digamber Kamat will be amongst the dignitaries on the dais for the inaugural function.
Eminent actress Amrita Rao will do the compeering on the inaugural day. Illina D’Cruz, a Telugu actress of Goan origin will be the special guest for the inaugural ceremony scheduled at Kala Academy.
The festival will be kicked off with a film by film-maker Peter Chan 'The Warlords’ on Saturday.
‘The Warlords’ produced by Hong Kong-based film-maker Chan will be the inaugural film for the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2008.
“Iranian film 'The Song of the Sparrows’ directed by Majid Majidi will be closing film for the festival,” director of film festivals S M Khan announced here on Friday November 21.
“The films from Asia, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa will compete for the award which will be selected by jury headed by Peter Chan, a noted director from Hongkong,” he said.
Khan said that the other jury members include Marco Muller (Venice), Niki Karimi (Iran), Lav Diaz (Singapore) and Tabassum Hashmi (India).
The festival will have retrospective of Aki Kaurismaki (Finland), John Landis (USA) and Wong Kar Wai (Hongkong).
This time, the films from countries including Russia, Switzerland and Iran would be in the 'Country Focus’ section wherein best of the films would be screened during the festival.
The IFFI 2008 will also have special tribute to Iranian filmmaker Niki Karimi. Also, the five films by NRI film-makers would be screened during Film India Worldwide section.
Khan said that Indian Panorama will have 47 Indian films including 26 feature films and 21 non-feature films.
The retrospectives will be given to Bimal Roy and L V Prasad for their birth centenary year and 75 years of Kannada cinema.
India’s veterans Dilip Kumar, Lata Mangueshkar, B Saroja Devi and Tapan Sinha would be conferred lifetime achievement award constituted by Government of India to commemorate 60th year of India’s independence, the DFF director said.
Homage would be paid to G P Sippy, B R Chopra, F C Mehra, Jayashree Gadkar, Raghuvaran, Mahendra Kapoor, Jeeva, Sridhar, Vijay Tendulkar and Nabendu Ghosh.
The festival will also have screenings of the films based on Taj Mahal including Shiraj, a 1928 made silent film, Shah Jahan (1946), Taj Mahal (1963) and Taj Mahal (2005).
National Films Division Corporation (NFDC) has organized a film bazaar on the sidelines of the conference which will give an opportunity for the film-makers to network.