News

Murali Nair

Indian director Murali Nair has been appointed as the Directing Mentor for the Asian Film Academy 2011. Asian Film Academy is an educational program for new Asian talent in cinema. It will take place from September 29-October 15, 2011 alongside Busan International Film Festival.

His film Throne of Death (Simhasanam) was awarded the Camera d’Or at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival in 1999. His last film to have made it to Un Certain Regard in Cannes was Arimpara in 2003.

Nair had been one of the jury members for the New Currents Section at the Busan International Film Festival 2010.

Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi has been appointed as the Dean of the Asian Film Academy.This is for the fist time that an European will serve as the Dean of the Afa which has been headed by Asian directors like Abbas Kiarostami, Hou Hsiao Hsien, ImKwon-taek, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and Mohsen MakhMalbaf.

Since his...

They(Cannes) have a very Euro-us centric view of cinema which we cannot conform to. We are neither the Far-east like Japan, nor the West in that sense. We are the in-between world. Our culture is very little understood in the West. To appreciate the cinema, you have to understand the culture and the people–Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Come May and the time seems rife for a critical analysis of the state of Indian cinema. The country that churns out the largest number of films in the world in a year doesn’t figure in the list of countries which will have their films presented at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Does that reflect anything about the cinema in our country? The debate is pursued with a renewed interest and vigour every year. Well, some believe that our films are just not good enough while there are others who question the...

It wasn’t until Vikramaditya Motwane saw his name on a board alongside those of filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Ridley Scott that the gravity of having made a film that was officially selected for the Cannes film festival sank in. The debutant director’s Udaan was the first Indian film to make the official selection since Murali Nair’s Arimpara in 2003, and it was also the first time Udaan was seen by an audience larger than 50 people. “It was nerve-wracking. Ronit Roy (who acts in the film) was sitting next to me saying ‘breathe, breathe’,” recounts the 33-year-old Motwane, whose ...

Gautaman BhaskaranIt is only natural that Vikramaditya Motwane’s Udaan arrived at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival literally on a flight of hope and expectation. For, India has had a no-show for seven years, the last entry from the nation of 1200 movies a year being in 2003. Murali Nair’s Arimpara from Kerala had certainly been a rank bad choice, and poorly conceived and made. And to boot, what a subject of a mole on a man’s face growing with gigantic alarm! Happily, Udaan, which I watched ...

Vikramaditya Motwane’s “Udaan”, the film that made it to Un Certain Regard at Cannes International Film festival after seven years has been the talk of the town lately. With Udaan, Indian cinema’s seven year long jinxed relationship with the premier film festival has come to an end. Murali Nair’s Arimpara was the last film to have made it to Un Certain Regard, the section that carries the second most prestigious award, in the year 2003. Prior to that, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas was presented as a special screening out of competition at the festival in 2002.

Come to think of it, India and Cannes have had a cordial relationship right from the start. 1946, the year one of the oldest film festivals began at Cannes, Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar was screened as a Feature film in competition. Neecha Nagar was a pioneering effort in realistic Indian cinema and...