The countdown has begun. The 18th edition of International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK 2013), city’s most celebrated cultural extravaganza, is all set to roll from December 6. This year’s fest is highly anticipated as it features a total of 209 movies from 157 directors, to be screened across 11 theatres in Thiruvananathapuram. The screenings will be held at Kairali, Sree, Nila, Kalabhavan, Sree Padmanabha, Athulya, Dhanya, Remya, Anjali and Sree visakh. Like previous years, there will be an evening screening everyday at Nishagandhi open air theatre which is open to the public.
The Competition section, the main attraction of the festival, includes 14 films. Two Malayalam films - ‘101 Chodyangal’ by Sidhartha Siva and ‘Kaliyachan’ by Farook Abdul Rahiman are part of the competition section.
The Country Focus segment includes 7 films from Nigeria, portraying the bleak realities of Africa with its superstitions and cultural dogmas. The World Cinema section showcases 79 films, out of which 35 are co-produced and 13 are co-directed films. The festival which include a wide variety of different categories include a new section called Expressionism - The Indo-German Connection. It portrays the cultural connection between India and Germany. Samurai Films which includes films of famous
Japanese directors like Kon Ichikawa and Kenji Mizoguchi projects Japanese nationalism and their cultural traditions.
The French new wave films of Jean Renoir, coming under the Retrospective section would be a novel experience for the audience. The Retrospective section also includes Italian films by Marco Bellochio, Japanese films by Takashi Mike, French films by Claire Denis and German director Haren Farocki’s films. Six films of Malayalam film director Hariharan are also included in the section.
Original Glory:100 Years of Indian Cinema, another segment celebrating 100 years of Indian Cinema, includes M S Satyu’s ‘Garm Hava’, B R Panthulu’s ‘Karnan’, Kamal Swaroop’s ‘Om-dar-ba-dar’, Mrinal Sen’s “Bhuvan Shome’ and Satyajit Ray’s ‘Charulata’. These films project the socio-cultural aspects of India in a bigger way.
The homage section includes the movies of great movie stars and directors who have recently passed away. A tribute to Rituparno Ghosh, the pioneer of new wave Bengali cinema is included. His 3 films that are being screened are ‘Chitrangada’, ‘Memories of March’ and ‘Satyanweshi’. Movies of demised Malayalam artists Sukumari, Konnanatu Raghavan Master and Dakshinamoorthi also come under the homage category.
Trigger Pitch, an initiative started since 2010 conducted by the KSCA and the Indian Documentary Foundation, to bridge the gap between creative and marketing sections of film making, will also be held during the festival. In Conversation, another section of the fest will be an interactive session giving the audience an opportunity talk to filmmakers directly.
The festival, hosted by Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, also pays tribute to veteran Spanish filmmaker and photographer Carlos Saura by awarding the Lifetime Achievement award during the gala opening ceremony on December 6.