Naseeruddin inaugurates traveling film festival
02 July, New Delhi
Seventh edition of the Jagran Film Festival (JFF) has been inaugurated by veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah here.Touted to be India’s only travelling film festival, JFF opened at the Siri Fort auditorium last evening with the screening of Ketan Mehta’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’ and ‘Chotay Shah’, directed by Sahiba Sumar.
The official gala opening was attended by eminent film personalities such as Naseeruddin Shah, Ketan Mehta, Sandesh Shandilya, Ballu Saluja, Shekhar Das, Avinash Arun, Rahul Shantaram, Khalid Ahmed and critically-acclaimed filmmaker Jahnu Barua among others .On its opening day, the festival paid tribute to legendrary filmmaker V. Shantaram through the screening of his movies like ‘Do Ankhen Barah Haath’ and ‘Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje’.
Also held on the inaugural day was a seminar on V Shantaram’s legacy followed by screening of ‘Zinda Bhaag’ that also had a conversation between Mayank Shekhar and actor Naseeruddin Shah. Apart from the sessions and screenings movies in Jagran Shorts were also screened.Speaking on the occasion, Shah said JFF is an initiative by the Jagran Group towards creating a culture of cinema appreciation, to spread this culture, and create a platform that brings great content to audiences across the country.
The 7th edition of the festival will showcase films under the categories of ‘Indian Showcase’, ‘Jagran Shorts’, ‘World Panorama’, ‘Jagran Discovery’, ‘Country Focus’, ‘Zeal for Unity’, ‘Tributes’ and ‘Secret Section’.Indian films like Talvar, Sarbjit, Airlift, Nil Battey Sannata and Neerja amongst others will be showcased during the festival.Enthused by the response to this initiative by both the audiences and the filmmakers, the festival plans to travel an even greater distance.
It will start from Delhi, traveling through Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varansi, Agra, Meerut, Dehradun, Hisar, Ludhiana, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Raipur, Indore, and Bhopal and finally culminate in Mumbai.A unique feature of this year’s edition of the festival ‘Zeal for Unity’, a package of 12 films by Indian and Pakistani filmmakers- – six each by Indian and Pakistani film directors.
The Indian directors whose films will be featured in the section are Nikhil Advani, Ketan Mehta, Aparna Sen, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Bejoy Nambiar and Tanuja Chandra. Another attraction is the introduction of Cuba’s ‘Imperfect Cinema’ exposition as part of the country focus section and a few new sections like the ‘secret section’ which seeks to pull out unreleased and lost films from history”.