MAARGAM

MAARGAM (THE PATH) Malayalam/108 minutes/35mm/Colour The film explores a father-daughter relationship against the backdrop of the contemporary realities of a globalising, urban society in Kerala. Menon suffers from frequent spells of depression. In her emotional efforts to help her father, the daughter begins to understand the dichotomies of his past and paradoxes of the present, where the concept of a culturally diverse egalitarian society itself is being questioned. The father and daughter are carried on to an inward journey of re-discovery and re-definition of the human story. Director / Producer : Rajiv Vijay Raghavan Rajiv Vijay Raghavan has directed nine documentaries and has won two Kerala state awards and a National Award. ‘Maargam’ is his first feature film. CREDITS Screenplay : S. P. Ramesh , Anwar Ali, Rajiv Vijay Raghavan Camera : Venu Editing : Bina Paul Music : Isaac Kottukapally Cast : Nedumudi Venu, Meera Krishna, KPAC Lalitha, Valsala Menon. AK/BKS/BY/VRG 13/ 26.11.2004

Pre festival screenings for the press begin

As part of 40^th International Film Festival of India – 2009 pre Festival screenings commenced today for the Press and Media. ‘Ilisa Amagi Mahao’, ‘For Real’, ‘Ekti Kaktaliya Golpo’, ‘Angshumaner’, ‘Dot In For Motion’, ‘Ijjodu’, ‘Swaymabhu Sen Foreseas’ and ‘Kutty Srank’ are being screened in Macquinez I. The synopses of these are as below:

ILISA AMAGI MAHAO (The Taste of A Hilsa)

It is not dawn yet. Only the father and the son in a boat can be seen stirring the river. After casting their net once or twice they move down southwards. Drifting a little further they hit on luck. A big, silvery white hilsa is rolling in the net. Father decides not to sell it off. He hopes to invite his pregnant daughter for a meal. He wishes to share the taste of hilsa with his family. But he comes to know that they have no rice to cook…….

FOR REAL

For Real is all about a child’s determination to keep her family together when the adults are intent on destroying it. Six-year old Shruti knows something no one else does. An alien has come in place of her mother and her real mother has been sent to the Orion Galaxy. While the alien looks just like her mother on the outside, Shruti knows she is completely different from her beloved mother on the inside. Shruti turns to her brother for help but he doesn’t believe her. Her father, like always, remains engrossed in work and unavailable to her. Unable to accept the Alien in her home and desperate to be with her mother, the lonely child runs away. What follows is a child’s passage to finding her real mother, a man’s struggle to save his family and a woman’s journey to finding herself.

EKTI KAKTALIYA GOLPO

The narrative revolves around a 13-year-old boy, Babai. He is given a magic marble (which apparently has the power to summon the king of fish) by an old man who stays in the ground floor flat of his apartment. His teacher (who stays in the same building) takes it way asking him to concentrate on his studies than on fantasies. The boy’s dreams are crushed as he sits by his window with a handmade fishing rod. However, coincidences bring about an unusual turn of events.

ANGSHUMANER CHHOBI

Angshuman had left Kolkata eight years ago to pursue a course in filmmaking in Italy. He stayed back for a career in documentary and advertising. But he has to fulfil a commitment to his college professor to make a film in Bengali. Armed with an interesting script about the curious relationship between a septuagenarian celebrity painter and a young nurse, Angshuman lands in Kolkata. But the project turns out to be a non-starter with a series of hurdles coming one after another, involving three people who are linked to Angshuman’s film-Pradyut, the legend of Bengali cinema living in self-imposed exile, Madhura, who could never live up to the expectations generated by the national award she won for her first film and Neel, a young man passionate about dance and astronomy who finds his life getting changed forever with a stroke of destiny. Things come to a head with a crime on the scene. An alleged suicide brings SP Sourya Roy to investigate the case.

DOT IN FOR MOTION

Dot in for motion traces India’s recent growth after economic liberalization and the information revolution and its effect on the lives of the vast Indian populace. Does globalization really usher in liberty? Does the open market mean a more open society? Does it really foster democracy? Or is it a process of homogenization slowly taking over this nation of enormous diversity? The film neutrally records the voice of people, from lounge of the silicon city to a remote tribal village that never heard of electricity.

IJJODU

In a remote area in Karnataka, photojournalist Ananda meets Chenni, a woman who was made a Basavi-offered at the altar of the village deity to save the superstitions locals from a devastating epidemic. Basavis, like Devdasis, often end up becoming sex workers and bear the brunt of social stigma. Ananda is shocked to learn that Chenni is a Basavi and tries to persuade her, with rational arguments, not to pay the price for superstition. When he insists that she should get married, Chenni asks him if he would marry her but he is not bold enough. The next day when Chenni is found dead on the steps of the temple pond, Ananda feels guilty for her suicide because he was not strong enough to give her a new life.

SWAYMABHU SEN FORESEAS HIS END

It’s 26 July 2005. Three narrators atop a bus entertain the stranded with an urban legend of an extraordinary filmmaker who stole everything he needed to make a film, from film stock to camera. Beyond this the three narrators take the stories in different directions. All stories conclude with the filmmaker not making the film but the how and why differ. The film is a magical, dark journey into the possibilities of fate and the survival or true talent in the business that Indian popular cinema has been reduced to.

KUTTY SRANK

The police find an unidentified body on the beach and three women turn up, each claiming it is ‘her’ Kutty Srank. One is a wealthy woman who wants to become a Buddhist nun. The second is an actress who is later accused of the murder. She was acting in a traditional Christian play with Kutty Srank. The third is a gentle, mute woman who gets pregnant by Kutty Srank. Will this richly short film, with multiple skeins and powerful imagery, reveal the real Kutty Srank?

आकाशवाणी

All India Radio (abbreviated as AIR), officially known as Akashvani (Devanagari: आकाशवाणी, ākāshavānī)is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of Prasar Bharati(Broadcasting Corporation of India), an autonomous corporation of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Established in 1936, today, it is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster.

The word Akashavani was coined by Professor Dr. M.V. Gopalaswamy for his radio station in Mysore during 1936.

All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks in the world. The headquarters is at the Akashwani Bhavan, New Delhi. Akashwani Bhavan houses the drama section, the FM section and the National service. The Doordarshan Kendra (Delhi) is also located on the 6^th floor of Akashvani Bhavan.

During his regular broadcasts from the Azad Hind Radio, Subhas Chandra Bose used to refer to the pre-independence AIR as Anti Indian Radio.

An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate, he's given more than a thousand times.

Nandi Awards

The Nandi Awards are presented annually in Andhra Pradesh, India for Telugu cinema by State government. "Nandi" means "bull", the awards being named after the big granite bull at Lepakshi — a cultural and historical symbol of Andhra Pradesh. Nandi Awards are presented in four categories: Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Copper. A variant, Nandi Natakotsavam Awards is also given every year by the Andhra Pradeshgovernment for social, mythological and poetic Dramas

Harishchandrachi Factory

Harishchandrachi Factory (Marathi : हरिश्‍चंद्राची फॅक्टरी, "Harishchandra's Factory") is a 2009 Marathi film, directed by theatre-veteran Paresh Mokashi, depicting the struggle of Dadasaheb Phalke in making Raja Harishchandra in 1913, India's first feature film, thus the birth of Indian cinema. ^[1][2].

Harishchandrachi Factory is the directorial debut of Paresh Mokashi who won the Best Director award at Pune International Film Festival, where the film was shown. . In September, 2009, it was selected as India's official entry to Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film Category, making it the second film, after Shwaas(2004), in Marathi cinema to receive this honour

Awards and honours

• 2009: Pune International Film Festival: Best Director Award: Paresh Mokashi
• 2009: 18th Aravindan Puraskaram 2009 (Chalachitra Film Society, Pune): Best Debutant Director: Paresh Mokashi
• 2009: India's Official entry: Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• 2009: 46th Maharashtra State Film Awards
  • Best Film
  • Best Director: Paresh Mokashi
  • Best Art Direction: Nitin Chandrakant Desai
• 2009: Ahmedabad International Film Festival: Best Film
• 2009: Kolhapur International film Festival: Best Film [People's Choice Award]
• 2009: Signs 2009, Kerala : Best Film
• 2009: Chalchitra Film society, Kerala : Best Débutante director
• 2009: Golapudi Shrinivas National Award, Chennai : Best Débutante director
• 2009: V Shantaram Award : Best Costume
• 2009: Balasaheb Sarpotdar Award : Best Film

Sandalwood

The Cinema of Karnataka, sometimes colloquially referred to as Sandalwood^[1][2] encompasses movies made in the Indian state of Karnataka. Most of the movies are made in theKannada language, with a handful of them in Konkani or Tulu.