On the move

The Jagran Film Festival, which seeks to make quality cinema accessible across the country, begins its journey in Delhi

Filmmaker Amol Palekar will judge different sections of the festival. Photo:Thulasi Kakkat

After being screened to appreciative audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, Anurag Kashyap's Ugly will have its Delhi premiere this Saturday, as the opening film of the Jagran Film Festival.

Now in its fifth year, the film festival seeks to take “quality cinema” to those who are not often able to access it. In keeping with this philosophy, the festival will, after the Delhi leg (July 5-9), move to Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Agra, Meerut, Dehradun, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Indore and Bhopal, before concluding its travels in Mumbai (September 23-28).

“While there has been lots of good cinema recently, it has not been reaching people everywhere. We thought we could leverage our reach to take these films to audiences in other towns and cities,” says Basant Rathore of Jagran Prakashan Limited, which organises the film festival.

The Indian Showcase and the International Short Film Competition sections are the highlights of the festival, and are being judged by renowned filmmakers Amol Palekar and Goutam Ghose respectively. In the competitive Indian Showcase section, selections include films that saw wide theatrical release such as

Highway, Madras Cafe, Queen and Gulaab Gang as well as lesser known and regional films, such as Tapal, Manjunath and Ayal .

“In our festival, we don’t believe in distinctions between commercial and art films. A film is a film, a story is a story, and it does not matter whether it features well known or lesser known stars,” Rathore adds, explaining the rationale for the uneven selection.

Another section of the festival, Cinema of the Uprising, highlights stories of oppression and struggle through a package of seven films. These include

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose , Shyam Benegal’s biopic of the freedom fighter,

Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja , a 2009 Malayalam historical drama based on the life of a Hindu king who fought against the British in the 18th Century and

Beatriz’s War , which traces the oppression and struggle by women from East Timor against colonisation of their region by Indonesia, among others.

The festival also has a classics section, wherein it is paying tribute to Bimal Roy with a retrospective this year. This section, says Rathore, has in the past accounted for the best attended films of the festival.

In addition to the film screenings, the festival will host a number of panel discussions — on casting in cinema, the rise of independent filmmaking, the impact of television on cinema among others.