Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Film festival to end today

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The 13th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) will conclude on Friday with the award ceremony to be held at Nishagandhi open air auditorium at 6 p.m.

Cultural Affairs Minister M.A. Baby, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Vijayakumar and Food and Civil Supplies Minster C. Divakaran will be present at the closing ceremony which will commence with a Sufi concert by Zila Khan.

Mr. Baby will give away the film and media awards at the function. Following the award ceremony, the film which bags the Golden Crow Pheasant Award will be screened at the auditorium. The function will also include a performance by artistes from Kalamandalam.

The 13th IFFK, which began a week ago amidst the staging of protest by Aikya Vedi workers, is also set to end on a note of protest. While the earlier protest was for the non-inclusion of the film ‘Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar,’ this time two Malayalam film-makers have voiced their dissent over the lackadaisical attitude of festival officials towards their films.

Film-makers Biju and Ashok R. Nath had obtained entry for their films ‘Raman’ and ‘Meezhikal Sakshi’ respectively through the High Court intervention. The film-makers had obtained an interim order from the court asking IFFK authorities to include their film in the ‘Malayalam Cinema Today’ section of the festival. The films were scheduled to be screened at the Nishagandhi auditorium on December 17 and 18 respectively.

However, the two directors alleged here on Thursday that the festival authorities did not ensure delegate participation for the screening of the film ‘Raman’ on Wednesday. They said the festival authorities did not give proper publicity for the screening of the film. “Although the court order was to screen the film at 6 p.m., ‘Raman’ was screened only at 9 p.m. And none of the festival authorities were there to introduce the film-maker to the audience, as is the custom in the festival,” the press release said.

It also said that festival authorities switched off all the lights soon after the screening of the prior film, leading to the exit of a large number of delegates.

The film-makers also alleged that no arrangement were made to bring the jury to the screening.

“By adopting such an attitude to parallel cinema, the festival director has violated the court order,” the film-makers said.

They also demanded a repeat screening of their films, like the rest of films in the ‘Malayalam Cinema Today’ category.

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