The 9th Osian’s Cinefan Festival of
Asian and Arab Cinema opened in Delhi
on July 20, 2007 with the global
premiere of Babak Shirinshefat’s film
Raami, a co-production between Iran
and Azerbaijan.
Around 140 films from over 35
countries will be screened in
auditoriums such as the Siri Fort
complex, the Alliance Francaise, PVR
Plaza, and PVR Rivoli, in Delhi.
The Osian's Cinefan festival – with
the tagline ‘Recreating Cinematic
Culture' – will have a section named
Focus on Japan to mark the Indo-Japan
Friendship Year, with a tribute to
Kenji Mizoguchi. A number of
contemporary Japanese and samurai
films are being screened in this
section.
The Focus on Japan section would also
include Japanese poster designs of
World Cinema.
The Focus on Japan has a benshi
performance – the first of its kind in
India – that pays homage to Kenji
Mizoguchi. Benshi was used for silent
films, with a narrator, the benshi,
telling the story.
The festival will screen Mizoguchi’s
masterpiece silent film, The Water
Magician (1933), with a narration by
Yuko Saito, one of the world’s leading
benshis.
The Silhouettes section consists 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.
The regular sections are
Cross-Cultural Encounters, Frescoes
(of Asian and Arab films),
In-Tolerance, and Indian Mosaic for
the best of the previous year’s
productions.
Commemorating the 150th anniversary of
India’s First War of Independence in
1857 are films that describe the
struggle for freedom in Asia and the
Arab world in a section called ‘Hymns
to Freedom.’ Films from India,
Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Indonesia, and Algeria will tell the
nature of their struggles and their
political and social fallout.
The ‘Springboard’ details 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.
‘Filmcraft’ showcases as well as
debates films that highlight a
specific aspect of film practice. This
year, the stress is on cinematography.
The Osian's Cinefan festival will
close with the screening of the film
Cut and Paste by Egypt’s Hala Khalil.
Osian's-Cinefan’s 4th Talent Campus
India, organised in collaboration with
Max Mueller Bhavan, the Berlin
International Film Festival and the
Berlinale Talent Campus, will be held
till July 27, 2007. On the occasion,
50 aspiring filmmakers will interact
with renowned film professionals from
India and abroad.
Another highlight of the
Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and
Arab Cinema is a conference on the
‘Origins of Cinema in Asia’ –
discussing how cinema arrived in
different Asian countries as also the
issues that were connected with its
growth. Also on the agenda is an
auction of ‘Popular Culture and Film
Memorabilia,’ along with a number of
exhibitions.
According to Neville Tuli, chairman of
Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art, the aim
of the festival is to promote a
culture, which could counter the
economic or religious value systems
that are often very narrow-minded.
