CinemaThe film festival is scheduled to be held between August 12 to 20th this year. Tnm StaffThe Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (Iffm), which is scheduled to take place between August 12 to 20th this year, will feature a number of south Indian films including critically acclaimed Jai Bhim (Tamil), Pedro (Kannada), and Chavittu (Malayalam), among others. Tamil movies like Jai Bhim, The Road to Kuthriyar, Perianayaki, Ayu, and Paraasakthi will be streaming at the film festival. Suriya starrer Jai Bhim premiered on Amazon Prime Video last year, coinciding with the festival of Deepavali and opened to positive responses from critics as well as the audience. The film is based on the story of a lawyer (Suriya), who fights to get justice for a tribal man falsely accused of robbery. Helmed by Bharat Mirle, The Road to Kuthriyar starring actors Dhruv Athreye, Chinna Dorai and Parvathi Om, narrates the story of a...
- 7/29/2022
- by SaradhaU
- The News Minute
Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, Amit Virmani’s Menstrual Man and Shilpa Ranade’s The World of Goopi and Bagha have been nominated under different categories for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Rajeev Ravi has earned a nomination for Achievement in Cinematography in Amit Kumar’s Monsoon Shootout.
The Lunchbox has been nominated for Best Screenplay while The World of Goopi and Bagha has been nominated in the Best Animated Feature Film category.
Amit Virmani’s Menstrual Man, a Singapore – India co-production, has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Film. The film made its Canadian Premiere at the HotDocs, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto and was screened at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (Idfa).
A total of 39 films from 22 countries will compete in nine different categories. The award ceremony will be held December 12, 2013 in Brisbane.
The jury is headed by Shyam Benegal and comprises South Korean director Kim Tae-yong,...
The Lunchbox has been nominated for Best Screenplay while The World of Goopi and Bagha has been nominated in the Best Animated Feature Film category.
Amit Virmani’s Menstrual Man, a Singapore – India co-production, has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Film. The film made its Canadian Premiere at the HotDocs, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto and was screened at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (Idfa).
A total of 39 films from 22 countries will compete in nine different categories. The award ceremony will be held December 12, 2013 in Brisbane.
The jury is headed by Shyam Benegal and comprises South Korean director Kim Tae-yong,...
- 11/12/2013
- by NewsDesk
- DearCinema.com
Tim Winton.s The Turning has been nominated for best feature film in the 7th annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards (Apsa).
In his first lead role in Ivan Sen.s Mystery Road, Aaron Pedersen scored a nomination for best performance by an actor.
Mandy Walker is in contention for the achievement in in cinematography gong for John Curran.s Tracks, the first Australian nomination in this category in Apsa.s history.
New Zealand film Shopping, produced by Aussies Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw of Warp Films, is in the running for best children.s feature.
Peter O.Brien plays the lead in Malaysian feature Almayer's Folly (Hanyut), whose writer/director U-Wei Bin Hajisaari is up for best screenplay.
Some 39 films from 21 Asia Pacific countries will compete in the awards which will be presented on December 12 in Brisbane.s City Hall.
Other nominees for best film are Asgha Farhadi.s The Past,...
In his first lead role in Ivan Sen.s Mystery Road, Aaron Pedersen scored a nomination for best performance by an actor.
Mandy Walker is in contention for the achievement in in cinematography gong for John Curran.s Tracks, the first Australian nomination in this category in Apsa.s history.
New Zealand film Shopping, produced by Aussies Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw of Warp Films, is in the running for best children.s feature.
Peter O.Brien plays the lead in Malaysian feature Almayer's Folly (Hanyut), whose writer/director U-Wei Bin Hajisaari is up for best screenplay.
Some 39 films from 21 Asia Pacific countries will compete in the awards which will be presented on December 12 in Brisbane.s City Hall.
Other nominees for best film are Asgha Farhadi.s The Past,...
- 11/11/2013
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
Palestine’s Omar and Bangladesh’s Television among best feature nominees in the upcoming Asia Pacific Screen Awards.Scoll down for full list of nominations
Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s Television is one of six films in the running to win best feature at the 7th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSAs) - the first film from Bangladesh to ever be nominated.
Television directly deals with issues of modernity versus tradition in rural Bangladesh, making it a film well worth debating within the context of the APSAs, which celebrate both quality cinema and the cultural importance of film.
Television closed the Busan International Film Festival last year. If it wins Apsa’s highest accolade it will have impressed the jury more than Omar from Palestine; With You, Without You from Sri Lanka; Like Father, Like Son from Japan; The Turning;, an anthology film from Australia and The Past, directed by one of Apsa’s most high-profile regular contenders, Iranian...
Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s Television is one of six films in the running to win best feature at the 7th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSAs) - the first film from Bangladesh to ever be nominated.
Television directly deals with issues of modernity versus tradition in rural Bangladesh, making it a film well worth debating within the context of the APSAs, which celebrate both quality cinema and the cultural importance of film.
Television closed the Busan International Film Festival last year. If it wins Apsa’s highest accolade it will have impressed the jury more than Omar from Palestine; With You, Without You from Sri Lanka; Like Father, Like Son from Japan; The Turning;, an anthology film from Australia and The Past, directed by one of Apsa’s most high-profile regular contenders, Iranian...
- 11/11/2013
- by Sandy.George@me.com (Sandy George)
- ScreenDaily
Renowned Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal will head the International Jury for the 7th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (Apsa) to be held on 12 December in Brisbane, Australia.
This announcement was made by Apsa Executive Chairman Michael Hawkins at the Busan International Film Festival.
“As India celebrates 100 years of cinema, it is fitting that the International Jury be led by a filmmaker of such gravitas as Shyam Benegal. The important task of determining the winners of the region’s highest accolade in film is being undertaken by a truly remarkable group of eminent filmmakers,” said Hawkins.
The Jury includes Korean screenwriter and director Kim Tae-yong,“Queen of Sri Lankan Cinema” actress Malini Fonseka, Turkish actor Tamer Levent, Swiss director Christoph Schaub and Hong Kong producer Albert Lee.
The Apsa International Jury will meet in Brisbane to view nominees and determine the winners of six award categories.
Shyam Benegal’s four-decade career has...
This announcement was made by Apsa Executive Chairman Michael Hawkins at the Busan International Film Festival.
“As India celebrates 100 years of cinema, it is fitting that the International Jury be led by a filmmaker of such gravitas as Shyam Benegal. The important task of determining the winners of the region’s highest accolade in film is being undertaken by a truly remarkable group of eminent filmmakers,” said Hawkins.
The Jury includes Korean screenwriter and director Kim Tae-yong,“Queen of Sri Lankan Cinema” actress Malini Fonseka, Turkish actor Tamer Levent, Swiss director Christoph Schaub and Hong Kong producer Albert Lee.
The Apsa International Jury will meet in Brisbane to view nominees and determine the winners of six award categories.
Shyam Benegal’s four-decade career has...
- 10/5/2013
- by NewsDesk
- DearCinema.com
A poll posted on March 4 by CNNGo, a division of Cable News Network (CNN), listed Guru Dutt, Nargis, Meena Kumari, Pran and Amitabh Bachchan among ‘Asia's 25 greatest actors of all time’. China’s Zhou Xun, Pakistan’s Mohammad Ali, Sri Lanka’s Malini Fonseka; Korea’s Ahn Sung-ki, Thailand’s Petchara Chaowarat and Malaysia’s P Ramlee are some of the other actors to make it to the elite club. Talking about Pran, the poll says, “So great is his notoriety as a villain that some Indian parents dare not name their sons Pran.” The comment brought back memories of an interview with the actor ...
- 3/14/2010
- Hindustan Times - Cinema
Bangkok -- Adding another prize to his growing collection for "Tulpan," Sergei Dvortsevoy took home the Golden Peacock best film prize at the closing ceremonies of the 39th annual International Film Festival of India, organizers said Wednesday.
After a minute of silence, the Kazakh writer and first-time director thanked the audience in Panaji, Goa, where the fest, which began Nov. 22, continued despite last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Dvortsevoy, whose film about a shepherd in training who wants to marry a girl who thinks he has big ears, said that while films cannot change the world, they can change people.
The closing ceremony's guest of honor, actor Shri Kamal Hasan, said that despite setbacks and dark moments, life must go on as normal. He congratulated the festival and its director, Shri S.M. Khan, for its rich collection of movies.
Khan told the audience that the festival condemns terrorism, and...
After a minute of silence, the Kazakh writer and first-time director thanked the audience in Panaji, Goa, where the fest, which began Nov. 22, continued despite last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Dvortsevoy, whose film about a shepherd in training who wants to marry a girl who thinks he has big ears, said that while films cannot change the world, they can change people.
The closing ceremony's guest of honor, actor Shri Kamal Hasan, said that despite setbacks and dark moments, life must go on as normal. He congratulated the festival and its director, Shri S.M. Khan, for its rich collection of movies.
Khan told the audience that the festival condemns terrorism, and...
- 12/3/2008
- by By Jonathan Landreth
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Out of Competition
CANNES -- Lester James Peries' "Mansion by the Lake" was one of two official selection films here inspired by Anton Chekhov plays. Peries, considered the father of Sri Lankan cinema, has transferred certain themes and characters from Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" into a Sinhalese social drama. The trauma of change and its strains on a once-wealthy family apply as well to a Sri Lankan family in the 1980s as to aristocrats in 1905 Russia. As a cinematic window onto a seldom-seen corner of the world, and as a quietly effective mood piece, "Mansion by the Lake", which screened Out of Competition, makes a perfect film festival movie. Any North American distribution, though, would be highly limited to older adults.
The 84-year-old director has made 18 films in a career stretching back to 1956. So it is somewhat surprising to encounter problems throughout the movie with exposition and repetition of information. These should have been licked at the screenplay stage. (In French fashion, writing credit gets divided between Peries for scenario and Somaweera Senanayaka for dialogue.) There also are minor irritants like a ring of keys carried by the mansion's caretaker that clatter away through dialogue passages. OK, we understand these keys are symbolic, but must they be such noisy symbols?
After several years in London, the widow Sujata Rajasuriya (Malini Fonseka) and her teenage daughter Aruni (Paboda Sandeepani) return to the family estate in Sri Lanka. Her adopted sister Sita (Vasanthi Chaturani), the keeper of those keys, has looked after the place while their brother Gunapala (Sanath Gunatileke) enjoys his life without ever dreaming of working or making something of himself.
The home's idyllic setting, a leftover from colonial days majestically overlooking a placid lake, proves illusory. The family is up to its eyeballs in debt, and the bank threatens to auction the property.
The widow and her brother turn to several possible saviors: Lucas (Ravindra Randeniya), the crafty son of a former tenant farmer, now a millionaire businessman; batty old Aunt Catherine (Iranganie Serasinghe), who lives alone with her even more daffy servant; and a lawyer, who can only shake his head. The family's way of life appears doomed.
Sujata also must confront ghosts, notably those of her late husband and, most traumatically, a son who died in the lake as a young boy. What provokes dreams about her son is the sudden appearance of his old tutor, Kirthie Bandara (Senaka Wijesinghe), now a radical student determined to shake the tree on which the old aristocracy so precariously perch. Kirthie means to be an instrument of the demise of the old world of privilege and caste despite the knowledge that the police are looking for him.
"Mansion by the Lake" is slow going at times, but when characters speak from the heart, the movie achieves a poignancy that helps us to understand the pain that social change produces. In the case of this now-downtrodden family, they face not change but a realization that they are already dead, that they are themselves ghosts.
Peries views their situation with touching ambivalence. Clearly, he is drawn to some aspects of the old ways, which he himself must have witnessed earlier in his life. Yet he recognizes how anachronistic the family has become and how characters are more comic than tragic. There is much wisdom in this film.
Veteran Fonseka manages to project an odd combination of tranquility and anxiety, while Chaturani is particularly fine as the one family member who never quite felt she belonged.
With the mansion's canopied beds, serene paintings and trim gracefully offsetting the white walls, we sense a world of order and privilege. A final sequence in which two bulldozers appear can't help but make one shudder.
MANSION BY THE LAKE (WEKANDA WALAUWA)
Taprobane Pictures
Credits:
Director: Lester James Peries
Screenwriters: Somaweera Senanayaka, Lester James Peries
Producers: Chandran Rutnam, Asoka Perera
Director of photography: K.A. Dharmasena
Production designesr: Sumitra Peries, Mani Mendis
Music: Pradeep Ratnayake
Editor: Gladwin Fernando
Cast:
Sujata Rajasuriya: Malini Fonseka
Sita: Vasanthi Chaturani
Gunapala: Sanath Gunatileke
Aruni: Paboda Sandeepani
Lucas: Ravindra Randeniya
Aunt Catherine: Iranganie Serasinghe
Kirthie Bandara: Senaka Wijesinghe
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
CANNES -- Lester James Peries' "Mansion by the Lake" was one of two official selection films here inspired by Anton Chekhov plays. Peries, considered the father of Sri Lankan cinema, has transferred certain themes and characters from Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" into a Sinhalese social drama. The trauma of change and its strains on a once-wealthy family apply as well to a Sri Lankan family in the 1980s as to aristocrats in 1905 Russia. As a cinematic window onto a seldom-seen corner of the world, and as a quietly effective mood piece, "Mansion by the Lake", which screened Out of Competition, makes a perfect film festival movie. Any North American distribution, though, would be highly limited to older adults.
The 84-year-old director has made 18 films in a career stretching back to 1956. So it is somewhat surprising to encounter problems throughout the movie with exposition and repetition of information. These should have been licked at the screenplay stage. (In French fashion, writing credit gets divided between Peries for scenario and Somaweera Senanayaka for dialogue.) There also are minor irritants like a ring of keys carried by the mansion's caretaker that clatter away through dialogue passages. OK, we understand these keys are symbolic, but must they be such noisy symbols?
After several years in London, the widow Sujata Rajasuriya (Malini Fonseka) and her teenage daughter Aruni (Paboda Sandeepani) return to the family estate in Sri Lanka. Her adopted sister Sita (Vasanthi Chaturani), the keeper of those keys, has looked after the place while their brother Gunapala (Sanath Gunatileke) enjoys his life without ever dreaming of working or making something of himself.
The home's idyllic setting, a leftover from colonial days majestically overlooking a placid lake, proves illusory. The family is up to its eyeballs in debt, and the bank threatens to auction the property.
The widow and her brother turn to several possible saviors: Lucas (Ravindra Randeniya), the crafty son of a former tenant farmer, now a millionaire businessman; batty old Aunt Catherine (Iranganie Serasinghe), who lives alone with her even more daffy servant; and a lawyer, who can only shake his head. The family's way of life appears doomed.
Sujata also must confront ghosts, notably those of her late husband and, most traumatically, a son who died in the lake as a young boy. What provokes dreams about her son is the sudden appearance of his old tutor, Kirthie Bandara (Senaka Wijesinghe), now a radical student determined to shake the tree on which the old aristocracy so precariously perch. Kirthie means to be an instrument of the demise of the old world of privilege and caste despite the knowledge that the police are looking for him.
"Mansion by the Lake" is slow going at times, but when characters speak from the heart, the movie achieves a poignancy that helps us to understand the pain that social change produces. In the case of this now-downtrodden family, they face not change but a realization that they are already dead, that they are themselves ghosts.
Peries views their situation with touching ambivalence. Clearly, he is drawn to some aspects of the old ways, which he himself must have witnessed earlier in his life. Yet he recognizes how anachronistic the family has become and how characters are more comic than tragic. There is much wisdom in this film.
Veteran Fonseka manages to project an odd combination of tranquility and anxiety, while Chaturani is particularly fine as the one family member who never quite felt she belonged.
With the mansion's canopied beds, serene paintings and trim gracefully offsetting the white walls, we sense a world of order and privilege. A final sequence in which two bulldozers appear can't help but make one shudder.
MANSION BY THE LAKE (WEKANDA WALAUWA)
Taprobane Pictures
Credits:
Director: Lester James Peries
Screenwriters: Somaweera Senanayaka, Lester James Peries
Producers: Chandran Rutnam, Asoka Perera
Director of photography: K.A. Dharmasena
Production designesr: Sumitra Peries, Mani Mendis
Music: Pradeep Ratnayake
Editor: Gladwin Fernando
Cast:
Sujata Rajasuriya: Malini Fonseka
Sita: Vasanthi Chaturani
Gunapala: Sanath Gunatileke
Aruni: Paboda Sandeepani
Lucas: Ravindra Randeniya
Aunt Catherine: Iranganie Serasinghe
Kirthie Bandara: Senaka Wijesinghe
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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