Tributes to Ray, Soumitra, Ravi Shankar mark Kolkata Film Festival
Yesterday, January 8, marked the beginning of the 26th Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF). Originally scheduled for November 5-12, 2020, the festival was postponed owing to the Covid pandemic. At the inauguration, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was virtually accompanied by actor Shah Rukh Khan and filmmaker Anubhav Sinha. The festival ends on January 15.
Among the highlights of the festival this year are tributes to the maestro Satyajit Ray to commemmorate his birth centenary, and Ray's favourite actor Soumitra Chattopadhyay, who died in November 2020 from Covid-related complications.
As every year, films will be screened at multiple venues such as Nandan, Rabindra Sadan, and Sisir Mancha. All screenings will be offline, there will be no digital screenings. A total of 1,170 films were submitted for this edition of KIFF, from among which 132 feature films, shorts, and documentaries from 45 countries have been selected for screening.
The very first film to be screened was Satyajit Ray's 'Apur Sansar', featuring Soumitra Chattopadhyay, at Rabindra Sadan. Many other films featuring Soumitra, such as 'Dekha', 'Ganashatru', 'Wheel Chair', 'Akash Kusum', 'Mayurakshi', 'Kony', 'Podokkhep' and 'Bohomaan' will also be screened as part of the special tribute segment.
Filmmaker and KIFF chairman Raj Chakraborty has announced that the 'Cine Adda', a regular feature of KIFF, will be held on the Nandan premises as usual. And Anubhav Sinha will be presenting the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture this year.
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Online bookings for individual films will begin from 10 am, two days before screening day. Viewers can book seats in advance on bookmyshow.com free of cost. However, only one ticket per person per show will be allowed. The M-ticket will be scanned at the entry of each auditorium. If a viewer doesn’t own a smartphone, necessary support will be provided at the helpdesk at each venue.
The festival will also pay centenary tributes to Pt Ravi Shankar, Hemanta Mukherjee, Bhanu Bandopadhyay, Eric Rohmer and Federico Fellini. Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1960 Hindi film 'Anuradha' will be screened as a tribute to Rabi Shankar, while the iconic Bengali film 'Saptapadi' will be screened as a tribute to Hemanta Mukherjee. 'Bhranti Bilas' has been selected as a tribute to Bhanu Bandopadhyay. In addition, there will be a screening of a documentary titled ‘Bhubonmoy Bhanu’. For Fellini, the films selected for screening are 'La Dolce Vita', 'I Vitelloni', 'Juliet of the Spirits', '8½' and 'The Voice of the Moon'.
For more information, you can always visit the KIFF website.
