IFFI 52, 047: 2021 will have been the last IFFI where FD participated and contributed At every IFFI, the Films Division (FD) of the Union Government of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), plays a prominent role. It provides technical support and runs a stall, among other things. Along with the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI) and the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), it is to be merged with the National Film ...

Kaanchli—Life in a Slough, Review: Slough and unsteady loses the race Probably the only thing going for Kaanchli is the fact that it is based on a Vijaydan ‘Bijji’ Detha story. Detha inspired the films Duvidha (directed by Mani Kaul), which was remade as Paheli (Amol Palekar), Charandas Chor (Habeeb Tanveer), Lajwanti (Pushpendra Singh) and Parinati (Prakash Jha). The much decorated author died in 2013, after writing some 800 short stories, all in Rajasthani, often translate...

Siraj Syed reviews ‘A Million Rivers’: Complex hOMage to simple man PURI This ‘homage’ began as a ‘tribute’ to Om Puri, counterpoised against Lillete Dubey, by writer-director Sarah Singh, four years before his death, in 2013, and was completed in 2016. We saw the film on 30th January 2017, at the Black Box, in Central Mumbai, courtesy the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Culture. When I last met Om Puri in the last week of November 2016, at the In...

MFF 17, by Jio-MAMI, Festival Diary, IV At film festivals, the experience of watching films is like no other. You have many choices, depending on the venue, and the option of walking out of one ‘bad’ film into another unknown entity, just next door, trying pot-luck. Advance booking, the norm at MFF, means that you might never ever succeed in getting a ticket, given that the number of delegates and media-persons always far outweighs the number of seats available, often by 3:1 or 4:...