11th Osian's Cinefan to open Oct 24 with Romanian film 'Hooked'

New Delhi, Oct 15 : India will be in the spotlight at the 11th edition of the Osian's Cinefan Film Festival which will open on October 24 with the Romanian film 'Hooked'.

Directed by Romanian filmmaker Adrian Sitaru, 'Hooked' is about how a Sunday picnic by a couple, meant to be an idyllic weekend getaway for them, turned into a strange day by a series of odd and unexpected events.

To be held at the Siri Fort Complex and the Alliance Franchaise, the 11th OCFF, being organised by the Osean's Connoisseurs of arts, in association with the Delhi Government, will showcase 100 films from 13 countries.

This year, the OCFF, to be held till October 30, will include a new section called 'NewStream Cinema', which will include films that have dared to redefine mainstream cinema, bridging the gap between the so-called commercial cinema and the so-called art cinema.

Included in the NewStream cinema section will be Vishal Bhardwaj's 'Kaminey', Anurag Kashyap's 'Dev D', Zoya Akhtar's 'Luck by Chance', Imtiaz Ali's 'Love Aaj Kal', Raj Kumar Gupta's 'Aamir' and Dibakar Banerjee's 'Oye Lucky Lucky Oye'.

Speaking at a press meet to announce the 11th OCFF, the Osian Cinefan Director General Mani Kaul said, ''There is something new happening to Indian mainstream cinema. We realised that in the new kind of cinema, the reality is handled in a literal way rather than the metaphoric way, the way it was depicted in Indian cinema in the 60s. With the new age filmmakers, even the metaphorical expression is brought down to a literal plane, shorn of broad symbolic suggestion or typical hidden insinuation common to the older cinema.'' Chairman of the Osian's Connoisseur of Arts, Neville Tuli said, ''The inclusion of the NewStream Section in the 11th OCFF is a step forward to bridge the gap between art and the so-called commercial cinema that should not have been there in the first place.'' Added Mr Kaul, ''These filmmakers and their films will find voice on the NewStream platform because they have both earned a sympathetic audience in the traditional exhibition space for mainstream cinema and broken new cinematographic ground for the Indian film industry.'' The NewStream session is envisioned as a two-fold event which will comprise conversions with filmmakers, the actors and technicians of these films as also interaction with the audience and screening of their latest work under discussion.

These Directors as well as other filmmakers from India will interact with the audience via Q and A sessions, lectures, panel discussions and seminars to ensure connectedness and a deeper understanding of each film screened. The approach will be intensive and an indepth analysis and scrutiny of the selected films will take place.

Mr Kaul said directors of the films screened in the section had confirmed their participation at the festival.

The OCFF this year, will have four sections. Apart from the NewStream section, there will be the 'InCompetition', 'InDialogue' and a 'Shorts' section.

The 'InCompetition' section will have masterpieces from the Indian, Arab and Asian worlds, selected in terms of their individual and unique vision, wherein the first, second or third eligible films of the filmmaker will compete.

The 'InDialogue' will blur genres and cross boundaries as they establish a dialogue on cinematic resonances between films from the India-Asian-Arab countries and the rest of the World.

An eclectic selection of shorts spanning genre, context and style will feature in the 'InCompetition' and 'InDialogue' sections.

In an incredibly atypical approach, the festival curators this year did not embrace a theme beforehand. Instead, brilliant films were first selected, analysed and then woven into a narrative-a radical change from the way films are selected at most film festivals.

At the 11th OCFF, the traditional jury paradigm has been altered. The small set of film specialist jury members judging the films has been replaced by a large body of film connoisseurs, who come from multiple disciplines, are both experienced experts in their fields as well as young dynamic minds, detached from narrow partisanship and passionate about cinema.

A unique feature of the festival would be an exhibition on the history of Indian cinema which will be held alongside the festival.

In another first, the auction coinciding with the festival this year will bring to the collector a striking range of Indian and Asian antiquities.

--UNI

(c) 2009 Published with permission from United News of India.
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