UAE | Leisure
32 movies to be screened at film fest
The second edition of the IIFA Film Festival was inaugurated by an actor from south India, Prabhu, in the presence of Amitabh Bachchan and a couple of other film personalities at the Grand Cineplex complex.
- By Vinita Bharadwaj, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:33 May 3, 2009
Dubai: The second edition of the IIFA Film Festival was inaugurated by an actor from south India, Prabhu, in the presence of Amitabh Bachchan and a couple of other film personalities at the Grand Cineplex complex yesterday.
The festival, which features 32 Indian movies 16 Hindi, 14 South Indian, 1 Bengali and 1 Marathi in addition to 6 short films started off with the screening of Tamil film Chandramukhi. The film's director, P. Vasu, was also present.
Ahead of the inauguration, Bachchan, who is also the IIFA Brand Ambassador said that it had always been the endeavour of IIFA to represent Indian cinema and not concentrate on Hindi movies alone.
Stating a less-popularised fact that contrary to public perception that the Hindi film industry was the largest, Bachchan reminded the media that it was in fact the Telugu film industry from Andhra Pradesh that made the most movies. "In fact even financially and commercially, Telugu and Tamil cinema are far ahead of Hindi cinema," Bachchan said.
Vasu and actor-producer Prabhu, both expressed their delight at being invited to IIFA as representatives of the Tamil film industry.
They conveyed a message from Chandramukhi's lead star, Rajnikanth, who is rumoured to charge more than double the price of even Bachchan. "Rajni sir sends his best wishes to IIFA, the people of Dubai and his fans and wishes the festival all success," Vasu said.
The Indian movies will be screened over a period of three days and staff at the Grand Cineplex confirmed that all the movies were definitely subtitled.
ENTERTAINMENT
Cinema is not dead, says Hollywood producer
Top Hollywood producer Ashok Amritraj said yesterday that cinema is not dead despite what doomsayers say about its imminent demise.
He said it was predicted when satellite TV brought entertainment to people in their homes and was repeated again when technology brought home movies on DVD.
Amritraj who was instrumental for hit movies as Bandits with Bruce Willis and Bringing Down the House with Steve Martin and Queen Latifah, said "content will always be king."
Amritraj was the keynote speaker at a roundtable yesterday on Media and Entertainment held at the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Amritraj had earlier said that good screenplay is very important for the success of a movie. "The creative aspects include getting [Angelina] Jolie to work with you. The commercial part is when the director comes and asks for more money, and you say, no," he said, to laughter from the audience.
He said the future for media and entertainment will be "quite extraordinary", citing mobile phones as the new platform for recreation for people. It was earlier reported that short movies for mobile phones are being produced. The producer whose movies have netted over $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) said people will continue to go to the cinema, but noted that in the next five to 10 years there will be new 'revenue streams' from the Internet.
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