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Wednesday, Aug 13, 2008
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Films chosen by icons to be showcased

World Movies channel brings ‘50 Movies To See Before You Die’ to be aired every Friday

— Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Actor Koel Purie at the launch of the most prestigious line-up of international movies at a function in New Delhi on Tuesday.

World Movies channel on Tuesday announced the launch of its year-long series of international movies showcasing films across different genres and languages.

‘50 Movies To See Before You Die’ will beam the greatest movies handpicked by celebrated filmmakers such as M. Night Shyamalan, Mahesh Bhatt, Anurag Kashyap and Tanuja Chandra, beginning August 22. The series will be aired every Friday at 11 p.m.

Addressing a press conference here, UTV Entertainment Television Chief Operating Officer Dilshad Master said: “When we chose the title for this project, our boss in Mumbai told us that it sounded inappropriate. But the films have been chosen by iconic filmmakers such as Mahesh Bhatt, who has chosen Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator,’ and Shymalan, who has chosen Zhang Yimou’s ‘Hero’ for this prestigious series. We are also chasing Shyam Benegal and other filmmakers and cinematographers for the yearlong series.”

Revealing the findings of a survey undertaken by the channel last year, Dilshad said Indians were travelling to newer destinations, trying exotic cuisines and wearing international brands such as Prada and Gucci. “We are a nation of movie lovers, politics and cricket. Besides the usual dose of Bollywood and Hollywood, we have 3,000 movies in 40 different languages. So we thought this was an opportunity waiting to tap.”

The channel would not even dub non-English films. “We wanted to retain the original flavour. Language of cinema is universal. One advertiser told us that we are the 16th genre of Indian television. Our viewers love watching films, are technology savvy, upwardly mobile and metro-centric. Right now we are running in metros, but soon plan to go to mini-metros. We have a library of 650 titles in 30 different languages.”

Bollywood actor Koel Purie, who will host the series, said both as an artiste and an ardent movie fan she found it exciting to view such movies because they were masterpieces chosen by the masters themselves.

Madhur Tankha

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