Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Baby inaugurates video film fete

Photo: S. Gopakumar

ALL SMILES: Minister for Culture M.A. Baby and filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan at the inauguration of Signs 2007 international video film festival in the city on Friday. —

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Signs 2007, the third international video film festival organised by the Federation of Film Societies of India, got off to a start here on Friday at the Kalabhavan theatre. Minister for Culture M.A. Baby inaugurate the event.

Filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan presided over the inaugural function. Kerala State Film Development Corporation chairman K.G. George was present.

As many as 106 films, including documentaries, short fiction, students’ video and cinema of resistance in Malayalam, English, Hindi, Tamil, Manipuri, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati and Kutchi will be screened at the six-day festival.

While the competition category for the third John Abraham national awards includes 42 films, the remaining will be in the non-competitive section. A three-member jury headed by filmmaker Kumar Shahani will decide the winning film. T.K. Rajeev Kumar and C.S. Venkateswaran are the other members of the judging committee.

The screening of films began on Friday morning. ‘Dance of the Enchantress’ by Adoor Gopalakrishnan and ‘Jahaji Music,’ a work by Surabhi Sarma featuring the Caribbean music tradition, were the inaugural films.

While the award for the best documentary and short feature comprises a cash prize of Rs.25,000, a statuette and citation each, that for the best students’ film and resistance film will win Rs.10,000.

The films selected for the festival include those made in India from January 2005.

The prizes will be given away at the closing ceremony on Wednesday. Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac is scheduled to inaugurate the valedictory function.

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