The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Curiosity is the buzzword at children’s film festival

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Monday, Nov 16, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Curiosity is the buzzword at children’s film festival

Swathi.V

- Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

HOUSEFULL: Crowds throng Prasad’s IMAX to watch films being screened as part of the ICCF on Sunday.

HYDERABAD: Weekend and a children’s film festival in the city. Which parent would not like to take his or her young ones on a merry-go-round of the movie world? Many aspired to, but only a few succeeded. Those who succeeded got delegate passes and filled three screens of Prasad’s Multiplex, with the children in tow.

Kids being kids, they had many questions to ask. One couldn’t understand the rationale of a movie in having puppets coming alive. Another wondered aloud why the ‘EF’ logo displayed atop the screen was not followed by ‘GH’. After all, that’s what they were taught at school, weren’t they?

Questions galore

So the little ones had all kinds of questions, making it tough for parents. But watch and appreciate, they did, as was evident from their emphatic nods when asked if they liked movies.

Child delegates from different parts of the country too had a field day. “The movie is nice. We are supposed to make a note of the films we watched and talk about them once we are back in school,” said Aditya from Chennai, after watching the Iranian film ‘A Time to Love’.

One among the 13 films screened on Sunday, the 85-minute film revolved around little Babak, disabled and hence disregarded by his father and brother.

How he wins over the two with the help of a friend and his teacher forms the storyline.

Iranian animator Fatima Yasrebi used simple crayons to convey a cryptic message. Her 13-minute film depicts a man entering five different rooms to face different encounters with nature.

As he moves from one room to the other, he is offered chairs moving gradually up in comfort and grandiosity, while his experiences progress from pleasant to the worst.

Thought-provoking

In the final room, losing all the previous opportunities, he is left with neither chair nor any imagery.

Encrypted with a strong environmental message, this movie shakes adults too out of their slumber. Austrian film ‘Mozart in China’ screened in the non-competitive slot portrays a cultural hand-shake between Europe and Asia. Puppetry was used effectively in the narrative to depict cultural harmony.

Also deserving mention is ‘I feel pity for the ozone’, a three-minute animation film directed by 12-year-old Pooria Aghili from Iran.

‘The Crocodiles’ (German), ‘The New Species’ (Latvia) and ‘The Lost Rainbow’ (India) were some other movies screened.

A 3-D movie, ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ was screened exclusively for underprivileged children. Four hundred differently-abled children along with children from welfare hostels watched the movie.

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