Wedding wins over audience

kolkata: the screening of mira nair's monsoon wedding was the high point of the concluding day of the week-long kolkata film festival. this was the first screening in india of the award-winning film to an audience that had several film personalities, including soumitra chatterjee, aparna sen and rituparno ghosh. nair, who is busy in new york with post-production work on her next film hysterical blindness, had sent a message to the audience at nandan."eleven years ago i escorted satyajit ray to the screening of salaam bombay at nandan. ray's teachings have stayed with me," she wrote. nair has promised to be in kolkata when the film is commercially released on november 30. as soon as the 110-minute rambunctious film on a punjabi wedding ended, the audience broke out in applause. that included nair's contemporaries like sen and ghosh. "i really enjoyed it," said sen. her daughter konkona was visibly impressed. author nabaneeta deb sen, who was also part of the audience, said it was a great film. the only member of the monsoon wedding team at the festival - scriptwriter sabrina dhawan - confessed that she had butterflies in her stomach before the screening. "it was very important that the kolkata audience liked it." she need not have worried since sen sought her out after the screening and gave her a huge hug. ghosh, too, talked to dhawan at length about the film. in fact, at one point in the film, bengalis are described as pretentious in response to a comment that punjabis are "way too ostentatious". but even that gibe was ignored by the audience. only paritosh sen, who was at nandan, did not fancy the film. he left well before the film ended. but he was clearly in a minority. cine central felicitates aparna the forthcoming film by aparna sen has been titled mr and mrs iyer in which her daughter konkona sen sharma will be playing the iyer couple's daughter. this was revealed by sanjib dutta, a member of cine central, at a function in which aparna sen was honoured with the satyajit ray lifetime achievement award. the award, jointly conferred by cine central calcutta and rotary club, old city, is in its third year. earlier recipients of the award were buddhadev dasgupta and ritwik ghatak (posthumous). receiving the award, sen said, "when the organisers contacted me, i wanted to know why they selected. when ashoke chandra chandra (cine central general secretary) said that i have already completed 40 years as an actress and 20 years as a successful director i had to give my consent." "it is a matter of pride and joy that the award i am receiving today is after the name of a personality who introduced me to the world of cinema," sen said.