IFFK: Action starts today

IFFK: Action starts today

The wait with bated breath is finally over! As the festival starts rolling today, the city of Ananthapadmanabhan is all set to welcome the ten thousand delegates who will throng the streets of the city for the next eight days. Organized by the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy on behalf of the department of cultural affairs, government of Kerala, the week-long fiesta is a celebration of sorts for movie buffs and will screen around 200 films from various countries.

  The Chief Minister of Kerala, Oommen Chandi will inaugurate the festival at Nishagandhi auditorium, Kanakakkunnu at 6 in the evening. Minister of forest, wildlife, sports and cinema K.B. Ganesh Kumar will preside over the function and the renowned Bollywood actress Jaya Bachan will be the chief guest. The inaugural function will be followed by ‘Destiny’s Dice’, a twenty three minute long cultural performance. The show is conceived and directed by eminent film maker T K Rajeev Kumar.

  The Chinese film ‘Under The Hawthorn Tree’, directed by Zhang Yimou will be this years’s opening film. This is the debut screening of the film in India.

  The films screened at the festival have been put under 14 categories. Arab cinema, Best of FIPRESCI, DEFA Films, Homage films, Indian cinema now, Jury films, Kaidan horror classics, kicking and screening, Malayalam cinema today, Philippine cinema, retrospectives, Contemporary master in focus: Semih Kaplanoglu, World cinema and competition films are the divisions.

  The international jury, headed by Australian filmmaker Bruce Beresford includes Philippine director Jeffrey Jeturian, Turkish filmmaker Semih Kaplanoglu, French director Laurence Gavron and Indian filmmaker Rahul Boss.

In the retrospective section, films of eminent directors Adolfas Mekas, Nagisa Oshima, Robert Bresson, Theodoros Angelopoulos, Yasuzo Masumura, Djibril Diop Mambety, and veteran Malayalam actor Madhu will be screened.

   The competition section this year consists of 14 films from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

This is the 16th edition of the IFFK which was initiated in Kozhikode in 1996. Hundred films were screened at that festival. This year features almost double the number.

FIPRESCI to offer the best

FIPRESCI to offer the best

A

n exclusive package of the years IFFK is the FIPRESCI (short for Federation Internationale de la Presse Cinematographique- an International Federation of Film Critics)  films, a package of films which had won the FIPRESCI awards in various festivals. FIPRESCI, the professional association of film critics found in 1930 in Brussels, Belgium, has members from 50 countries worldwide and has initiated the award for “the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests.”

            The Seven films inc.uded in the section is an analysis of the tastes and the changing face of the world cinema. 'Clay Bird (Matir Moina) from Bangladesh', the debut film  by Tareque Masud', is about a boy who is sent away by his father to madrasah, much to his mother’s dismay and was based on the director 's own experiences as a child at a madrasah during the violent civil war between a poorly armed population and the US-backed Pakistani military forces .At the Cannes Film Festival in 2002, the film atained the International Critics’ award (FIPRESCI) for its “authentic, moving and delicate portrayal of a country struggling for its democratic rights”

  Australian director Steve Jacobs’ film ‘Disgrace’,a screen adaptation of the acclaimed 1999 novel by Nobel Prize winner J.M.Coetzee, has John Malkovich as a disgruntled Cape Town University professor David Lurie whose life falls apart after he has an impulsive affair with one of his students. In the aftermath of a vicious attack on the farm where he took refuge after resigning his job, he is forced to come terms with more than his ‘disgrace’.

  The French film ‘Of Gods and Men’ by Xavier Beauvois portrays the lives of eight French Christian monks, who live in harmony with their Muslim brothers. Chang Dong Lee’s Poetry is a fascinating film which shows how one can gain new moral and social awareness by the wonders of personal creativity. ‘The Day I Was Not Born’-the German drama is about a woman who discovers that she was adopted by the people she thought were her real parents. It's a stoic movie about stoic people, their silences, and the price they pay for those silences, but the choked emotion of the ending hits you hard.

            The legacy of sexualized violence is the chief generational inheritance in Claudia Llosa's Golden Bear-winner The Milk of Sorrow. Sebastien Pilote’s ‘The Salesman’ centered upon Marcel Levesque –a car salesman who takes great satisfaction in the ritual of persuasion is also a debut feature which elegantly applies restraint and precision to mount subtle, quotidian moments into an emotionally crushing story.

IFFK Awards

IFFK  Awards

The Competition Section of IFFK is restricted to films from Asia, Africa and Latin America

SUVARNA CHAKORAM

 The Golden Crow Pheasant Award with a Cash prize of INR 15 lakhs (US $ 30,000 approx) for the Best Feature Film to be shared equally between the Director and the Producer.

RAJATA CHAKORAM

The Silver Crow Pheasant Award and Cash prize of INR 4 lakhs (US$ 8,000 approx) to the Best Director

RAJATA CHAKORAM

The Best Debut Film Award and a Cash Prize of INR 3 lakhs (US$ 6,000 approx) to the Best Director

AUDIENCE PRIZE RAJATA CHAKORAM

Cash Prize of INR 2 lakhs (US $ 4,000 approx) to the Director of the film voted as the Best Entry in Competition by the festival delegates.

FIPRESCI (The International Federation of Film Critics) gives an award for the Best Film selected by the FIPRESCI Jury

FIPRESCI Award for the Best Malayalam Film

NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Film Centre) award for the Best Asian Film in Competition.

NETPAC Award for the Best Malayalam Film

HASSANKUTTY AWARD

The Best Indian Debut Director (Rs. 50,000/- and memento) constituted by Ms. Mira Nair in memory of her assistant director late Hassankutty.