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Kolkata International Film Festival to be inaugurated today
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is going to inaugurate the 23rd Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) today at 4 pm at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.
KIFF 2017 will be inaugurated by Amitabh Bachchan. Shah Rukh Khan is the special guest, Mahesh Bhatt, Kamal Haasan and well-known British film director Michael Winterbottom are the distinguished guests, and Kajol and Kumar Sanu are the guests of honour.
The festival proper is going to take place from November 11 to 17. Like every year, film-lovers are going to have a feast of the world’s best cinema. As the tagline for the festival goes, ‘Bengal Welcomes World Cinema’. 143 feature films, 87 short films and 51 documentary films from 53 countries are going to be featured. Film personalities (actors, directors, producers, etc.) from 20 countries will be attending the festival, whose films are being screened. There will be sections like Retrospectives, Centenary Tributes, and others.
Among the films of Winterbottom that to be screened are Trishna, On the Road and Welcome to Sarajevo. Another attraction for film connoisseurs will be the screening of the famous French director, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1986 made-for-television film, Rise and Fall of Small Film Company, the first screening of the film in India after its restoration. This is being considered by film buffs to be a watershed moment for an Indian film festival.
Other attractions for connoisseurs are the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture, seminars, interactive sessions, exhibitions and special adda sessions. The prestigious lecture will be delivered by Rachel Dwyer, a professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Screening is taking place at 12 venues – Nandan 1, 2 and 3, Rabindra Sadan, Sisir Mancha, Navina Cinema, Star Theatre, Mitra Cinema, Inox at Salt Lake City Centre 1 Mall, Purbashree Auditorium at Salt Lake EZCC, Nazrul Tirtha and PVR Mani Square.
At Mamata Banerjee’s initiative, a few years back, KIFF was made a competitive film festival, with the Golden Royal Bengal Tiger award being given to the best film by a woman director and the best woman director.
The festival is organised by the Information and Cultural Affairs Department of the Bengal Government.
