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'Traffic Signal' wins accolades at Film Festival

Goa: The 37th international film festival started amidst lots of glitz and glamour with national and international faces lighting up the event. Today there will be the opening of the 5 days CII film bazaar at the Kala Academy awards. The Bazaar will have around 13 stalls and networking lounges. The Bazaar will have a buyer-seller lounge, space for independent film makers, locations lounge for states, the Finance Club, where there will be mentoring sessions.-Nov 24, 2006

         Panaji: Bollywood film Director Madhur Bhandarkar's latest creation Traffic Signal, scheduled to hit cinema screens during January-February next year, won accolades at the ongoing 37th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) where its first print was shown. A Percept Picture Company's presentation. Traffic Signal, depicts the life on the streets of Mumbai through a traffic signal where all types of people live, try to survive, jostle, and basically remain human. Bhandarkar's latest creation will complete a trilogy in tune with his earlier well-acclaimed, Corporate and Page-3 films.

        Speaking on the occasion, Bhandarkar said he was never interested in commercial cinema and is a happy man today since he is into making movies of a different genre. "I believe that there are many such topics in our country that can be making good films in our country or that should be made into films. I always said that I am not at all a commercial film maker. As people say, I love doing films on issue-based topics or topical topics like Satta, Page-3, Chandni Bar or Corporate. I like working on stories of human interest. My next film is Traffic Signal. What people face everyday and the industry that exists in Traffic Signal. I am happy that I try to make different kinds of movies," said Bhandarkar. "Traffic signal has Kunal Khimo who was in Kaliyug , Nitu Chandra, Kankona Sen, Ranvir Shori, it is a picture that has 60 characters and Sudhir Mishra is the villain in the picture. It was filmed in Mumbai for 35 days and the duration of the movie is 2 hours 5 minutes," noted the director. The budget of the film is around Rs 40 million (Rs 4 crore) and will be released with 210 prints. But for Bhandarkar, his film Satta produced by him in 2002 remains his most liked movie till date.

Protest against fest mismanagement

      Panaji: Hundreds of movie lovers including delegates participated in a sit-in protest against mismanagement at the 37th International Film Festival of India here when they were not allowed to enter the venues despite having the required passes. They were protesting for being disallowed to watch the movies being showcased at the film festival due to irregularities and utter mismanagement by the organisers of the event. The protestors complained that despite the fact that the Inox multiplex, one of the venues for films screening, having a seating capacity for 1,272 people, more than 5,000 delegate passes were issued. And, the gap between demand and supply caused a lot of inconvenience to all. As a result, there is a heavy rush to enter the theatres much before the scheduled time. Besides long queues, many film directors, producers, and technicians are finding it hard to watch popular movies.

          On Saturday afternoon, the situation reached a boiling point when the pass-holders, who were not allowed to enter the halls, started shouting slogans against the management authorities of the festival. "The organisers, along with the police personnel rushed in to pacify the agitating people, but to no avail. A meeting between the delegates and the organisers was called amidst much commotion," said Mohd. Idris, a delegate from Uttaranchal. "Though peace has prevailed for now, the matters will again come up on Sunday. The authorities are also gearing up to sort out the problem," said Nandini Paliwal, Chief Executive Officer, Entertainment Society Of Goa.

         The 37th IFFI is being held from November 23 to December 3 2006 in the coastal state of Goa. This festival's top prize -- the Golden Peacock -- will also carry along with it a cash prize of a million rupees, and goes to the director of the prize-winning film. The 'most promising director' gets a silver peacock and a cash prize of half-a-million rupees (Rs 500,000). There's also a special jury award, of a silver peacock and a cash prize of half- a-million rupees for an individual's artistic contribution.

        This year, this festival is being divided into the following categories -- competition (feature films by directors from Asia, Africa and Latin America); cinema of the world; retrospectives, tributes, focus; Indian panorama; mainstream Indian cinema. There will also be a film bazaar, an initiative of recent years to promote and sell Indian film. The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) (sometimes referred to as the India International Film Festival) is a ten-to-eleven day film festival organised by the Indian Directorate of Film Festivals and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The first IFFI was held in 1952; since 1975, it has been held annually. Since 1952, India has hosted 36 International Film Festivals, both competitive and non-competitive. These festivals became annual events from 1975 onwards.
-Nov 26, 2006

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