Diploma film fest in city from Jan 9

kolkata: a festival of diploma films made by students of national and international film schools will be held in the city. the festival — clapstick 2002 — will be held at the satyajit ray film and television institute (srfti) from january 9-13. srfti director jatin sarkar said on wednesday about 60 films have already arrived at the institute. “the response to the festival has been overwhelming.we have with us films from 18 films schools across the world and among them are 20 award-winning films,� he said. besides films from srfti and ftii, pune, schools from the us, uk, canada, hong kong, switzerland, germany, israel, australia and egypt will be represented at the festival. according to sarkar, the duration of the films range from two minutes to an hour. the festival entries are a mix of films, videos and dvds. besides the main section which is divided into fiction, documentary, animation and experimental films, there will be a focus section on a package from the national film and television institute, london. the package includes a grand day out, an animation film by nick parks who later won the oscar. there will be a package of films from ftii spanning the mid-60s to mid-80s. it will include the first films of directors like mani kaul, sunny joseph and john abraham. diploma films made by the first batch of srfti students, which were shown in mumbai and kolkata last year, will also be part of the festival. three of these films won national awards last year. sarkar said the budget for this year’s festival was rs 5 lakh. “we will make the festival an annual feature. it will be held on a larger scale from next year,� he said. the diplomatic missions of the us, germany, uk, france, japan and russia have collaborated with srfti for the festival. the films will be shown at srfti’s open air theatre and the main auditorium. entry to the festival is free. in addition to the films, there will be a panel discussion on january 12.