MUMBAI: The first meeting of the Organizing Committee for IFFI-2007 was held under the chairmanship of union minister of information and broadcasting and parliamentary affairs Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi. The meeting deliberated on the various issues related to IFFI-2007 and reviewed the level of preparedness for event. Dasmunsi said that over the years the festival has gone from strength to strength and endeavour has been to make it still better. He lauded the role and suggestions of film industry in raising the standard of the festival over time.
The Organizing Committee took the under noted major decisions:
The opening and closing functions will be simple and elegant in keeping with the practice in most of the prestigious international film festivals. The focus will be on the opening film and closing films. There will be no entertainment programme at these functions. The awards ceremony will be held at the closing function. This would be followed by the screening of the closing film.
Two new theatres with a seating capacity of 300 seats are being built in the festival complex. Two public theatres are being upgraded and provided with the latest projection facilities thereby making another 400 seats available for the festival.
The total number of delegates that may be registered has been fixed in proportion to the availability of theatre seats. The Government of Goa has been requested to screen the applications of local delegates and forward them to DFF for final approval.
The registration system for all delegates has been made completely online. Delegate cards will be prepared well in advance so that there are no long queues at the registration counter.
For the first time a ticketing system has been introduced whereby every delegate will have to book in advance for any films that he/she would like to see. A maximum of three tickets for every delegate and five for every media person will be issued.
The delegate registration fee for late registration has been considerably enhanced to Rs 1000.
The Indian Panorama will have 21 features and 15 non-feature films selected by a peer jury headed by K S Sethumadhavan, and Arun Khopkar respectively. Indian Retrospectives will showcase Retrospective on the films of Tapan Sinha and Vijay Anand. Homages section will focus on cinematographer K.K. Mahajan, actress Vanamala Devi and music director O.P. Nayyar.
Among the highlights of foreign section are, 14 feature films from Asia, Africa and
Master Classes, Technical Retrospective. Foreign Retrospectives and Country Focus will be the other features of IFFI-07.
For the first time, two programmers from the Goa government will be curating for IFFI with two separate sections called – India 60, which will celebrate India’s 60th anniversary with three feature films and two documentary films and a retrospective package on Volker Schlondorff the eminent German film maker.
The Film Market will be organized by NFDC with the participation of CII and FICCI. The NFDC is organizing a buyer’s lounge and co production market. FICCI is organizing a seminar and master class on animation and visual effects. CII will organize ‘The Big Picture‘ Conference.
A new initiative is being undertaken by NFDC in partnership with DFF where international consultants and experts will advise and work with selected film makers to develop scripts of international quality.
