Ambika Soni hold meeting for NFA and IFFI

Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni,called for meetings with two different committees formed for the purpose to better the International Film Festival of India and revamp the National Film Awards to make it look "au courant".
Film maker Shyam Benegal and Censor Board Chairperson Sharmila Tagore were present at the meeting held for the National Film Awards.Opinions on how to to upgrade the awards were exchanged.The committee is expected to submit its report by 15th of March,2010 which will contain suggestions to make the NFA more in with times by making qualitative changes.

The second meeting was held with the experts for International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and its improvisation so that a bigger and a better market can be captured for Indian films. The report for the same will be submitted by the committee again on the 15th of March,2010.The commitee members who attended the meeting were Chairman of the Committee Kamal Hasan,Pritish Nandy,Prasoon Joshi and NFA chairman Shyam Benegal.Other film makers who were present at the meeting were Ashok Vishwanathan, Jahnu Baruah, Mohan Agashe, Nagesh Kuknoor, Rajiv Mehrotra, Shajin Karun, Vishal Bhardwaj and Sai Paranjapye.

Ambika Soni expressed the desire for a definite time schedule to be sketched out so that NFA can be carried out on a timely basis and it is ensured that a proper,democratic and transparent procedure is adopted avoiding any king of litigation.

International Film Festival of India 2009

The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2009 will take off from 23 November and will screen around 200 films from India and abroad.

The IFFI will have a best director and best film award this year, as announced by the Festival director S.M.Khan. The director and the producer of the film both will share the best film award. The winner gets the Golden Peacock award and Rs.40 lakh cash prize. And the best director and winner of the Special Jury Award gets silver peacock and cash prizes of Rs.15 lakh each. So as to promote short films IFFI has initiated awards 'Vasundhara' which is the award for best green documentary and the documentary competition.




It is the most sponsored film festival in the country and it is expected that its 40th edition will bring participation of around 50 countries. Academy award winner Ben Kingsley will be the guest of honour this year.