NIFF brings award-winning flicks to coast

Noted Marathi film director Sunil Sukthankar on Monday said that film festivals are the ideal place to connect audience with the silver screen.

Speaking after declaring the open maiden Nitte International Film Festival (NIFF) organised by Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, Nitte University, in association with Suchitra Film Society, National Development Finance Corporation (NDFC), at Bharat Cinemas here, Sukthankar  said film festivals are the only place, where the film-makers can reach the movie buffs.

The experiments earlier restricted to parallel cinema, the other name of art cinema, have now found space in mainstream cinema too and they are also being accepted, Sukthankar said.

He also recalled his foray into the world of film-making as a clap boy for a short film with Sumitra Bhave wielding the megaphone.

Pro-chancellor of Nitte University Dr Shantaram Shetty said, “Mangaluru has produced finest of talents in the films irrespective of language that includes actresses Aishwarya Rai, Shilpa Shetty and Deepika Padukone, Suniel Shetty and also the popular director Rohit Shetty, whose father more known as ‘Fighter’ Shetty was a native of the city.”

Dr Shetty also made it a point that the university has drifted from health services towards entertainment with the film festival for the first time in less than a decade of its inception.

Free entry
To enable the moviegoers with free tickets, a separate desk has been set up at the entrance of the multiplex.

Entry for all the movies is free, irrespective of students and general public.

Scores of films
The screening of the films lined up for the festival began with ‘Kaasav’ in screen-3, ‘Unto the Dusk’ (Malayalam, directed by Sajin Babu) and Indonesian flick ‘Soejiga’, directed by Garin Nugruho, in screen-4 and screen-5 respectively.

The other films screened included-The violin player, a Bengali film directed by Bauddhayan Mukherji, ‘Zero made in India’ (Kannada, directed by Giridev Haasan), ‘Kenda Sampige’ (Kannada, directed by Suri), ‘Harikatha Prasanga’ (Kannada, directed by Ananya Kasaravalli), Harivu (Kannada, directed by M ansore) and Masaan (Hindi, directed by Dr Neeraj Ghaywan), ‘Sonar Baran Pakhi’ (Assamese, directed by Bobby Sarma Barua), ‘Amdavad Ma Famous (Gujarati directed by Hardik Mehta) and ‘Niranthara’ (Kannada, directed by Ravindra Parameshwarappa), ‘Red Butterfly Dream (Sri Lanka, directed by Priyantha Kalurachchi), ‘Haal-E-Kangal’ (Hindi, directed by P N Ramachandra) and ‘Quissa’ (Punjabi, directed by Anup Singh).