Amsterdam gets a taste of Southern spice
RANDOR GUY
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For the first time this year, Amsterdam hosted an exclusive Tamil-Malayalam cinema festival.
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Not many in this part of the country are aware that a Tamil-Malayalam Film Festival took place in Amsterdam, Holland. It began on March 10 and continued till the end of April. It is surprising that the Indian media has taken no notice of this interesting event. In the West, Indian cinema is equated with Hindi movies and those in regional languages such as Tamil and Telugu are virtually ignored.
(Recently a coffee-table book on Hindi cinema was brought out ignoring other languages, and it was titled `Indian Cinema.' Ismail Merchant, who was asked to write the foreword, was shocked and insisted that unless the title of the book was changed he would not write it. It was and he wrote the foreword.)
Cultural festivals
The Royal Tropical Foundation (RTF), a happy exception, and an association based in Amsterdam, Holland, has been conducting several festivals on Indian culture in its various aspects such as music, dance and cinema. (RTF is known as KIT in Dutch and the acronym stands for Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen.)
For nearly 20 years the Indian Cultural Festivals have been held here highlighting movies, dance and music. However, this is the first time a festival devoted to only Tamil and Malayalam Cinema was held this year. Mani Ratnam and his wife Suhasini were `special guests' representingTamil cinema, and for Malayalam it was Mohan Lal and Rajiv Vijaya Raghavan.
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