US-based film buffs host festival in city

Kolkata: A group of young cine-enthusiasts from America hosted a

short-film festival

in Kolkata in the presence of director Goutam Ghose and film scholar

Sanjay Mukhopadhyay

on Sunday. Entries from 15 countries were screened at the

International Golden Mirror Film Festival

.

The event was organised by Chicago-based Amit Chowdhury and

Kushal Bose

along with friend Amlan Dutta, who shifted to Kolkata from Chicago just before the Pujas. “We got a lot of help from Amitrup Dutta, Indranil Ghosh, Abir Mondal and Ranajit De.

Monalisa Dasgupta

flew down from the US to participate. She, along with 23 others, attended the event to receive their awards personally,” Dutta said.

The festival saw the presence of actors Kinjal Nanda, Anuradha Mukherjee, Debjani Chatterjee, director Arjunn Dutta and music director

Ranajay Bhattacharjee

, among others. According to Ghose, any effort made during a pandemic to support cinema ought to be lauded. “That’s why I went to support this initiative. I’m glad that so many young film-makers participated in this festival,” Ghose said.

Actor

Sukriti Lahori

, who was also felicitated at the event, loved Promita Bhowmik’s ‘Porichoy’. “It just had two characters and went on to win the best film award. Sudipta Chakraborty won the best actress award for the same film,” she said. Mukhopadhyay remembered how 75 years ago, avant-garde French film-maker and critic Alexandre Astruc foresaw a kind of cinema which is made as smoothly as effortless writing. “At this festival, some of the films that were shortlisted bear testimony to such kind of claims made by Alexandre. Most of the films curated for the festival make a personal statement about our emotional experiences of love, loss and nostalgic regret for time that doesn’t exist,” he said.

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