[Reader-list] [Announcements] Posting on the 9th OCFF

[Neel Chaudhuri]

9TH OSIAN'S CINEFAN, A CURTAIN RAISER                                                                            

 

The 9th Osian's-Cinefan  Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema gets underway in New Delhi on 20 July 2007 with a gala opening ceremony followed by the International Premiere of Babak Shirinsefat's film, Raami. The Festival will play host to over 300 international and Indian guests and expects an audience turnout of over 60,000.

Over ten days, audiences will be treated to the very best of Asian and Arab cinema. Our selection of 140 films from more than 35 countries reflects the unparalleled diversity and eclecticism of the cinemas of Asia and the Arab world. The 9th Osian's-Cinefan Festival Films will be screened this year at Siri Fort Auditoria Complex, Alliance Française de Delhi and PVR Plaza and PVR Rivoli. More than 300 guests - including filmmakers, festival directors, producers, actors, scholars and journalists will attend the festival.

In addition to contemporary films from Asia and the Arab world, the Festival, with the tagline 'Recreating Cinematic Culture', will have a Focus on Japan with a tribute to Kenji Mizoguchi. A number of contemporary Japanese and samurai films will be screened as well. Accompanying this focus are unique Japanese posters of World Cinema. 

The Japan focus will also have a benshi performance (narration of a silent film with accompanying music) - the first of its kind in India - that opens the homage to Kenji Mizoguchi on 21 July 2007. The festival will screen Mizoguchi's silent 1933 masterpiece, The Water Magician with a narration by one of the world's leading benshis, Ms Yuko Saito. 

On display will be one of the biggest exhibitions from the realm of Magic and Fiction, cinematic artworks from the realm of Horror and Science Fiction, and displays of the legendary divas of World Cinema as well as a gigantic display of fifty great Indian female stars.

This year, Osian's-Cinefan has introduced sections that have been specially curated, giving each curator the freedom to select the films of his or her choice. The Silhouettes section will consist of films with women as central characters in an oblique reference to Mizoguchi's predilection for highlighting the situation of women in Japanese society in his time. 

Commemorating the 150th anniversary of India's First War of Independence in 1857 will be films that describe the struggle for freedom in Asia and the Arab world in a section called Hymns to Freedom. This will be accompanied by an exhibition entitled A Historical Epic II: 1850 - 1880s, that focuses on the specific period between1850-80, and lays special emphasis on the 1857 Uprising in India. The exhibition comprises photographs, chromolithographs, photographic stills, hand-painted photographic stills.

In Springboard, we salute the role of film festivals in laying the foundation for the success of a film by showcasing films which, because of the awards or recognition they received there, went on to become landmarks in the history of world cinema.

We pay tribute to the technique of cinema in a new section called Filmcraft where, this year, we acknowledge the place of the cinematographer.

A Conference on the Origins of Cinema in Asia will discuss how cinema arrived in different Asian countries, and the issues that surrounded its growth. 

The Lifetime Achievement Award for distinguished contribution to writing on cinema will be presented to renowned writer and scholar from Japan, Tadao Sato, who will also deliver the Annual Cinefan Lecture.

 

 

Neel Chaudhuri

Senior Manager - The Film House

Osian's Connoisseurs of Art

B-35, Qutub Institutional Area

New Delhi - 110016

T: +91-11-41743166

F: +91-11-41743177

 

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