Four day Orange City International Film Festival concludes

NAGPUR: Four day Orange

City International Film Festival

concluded on Sunday with a chat session with actor Rohini Hattangadi and screening of the Chinese film ‘Free and Easy’. The festival featured 31 Indian and foreign films, 29 short films and 7 Marathi films. The concluding ceremony was presided over by union minister Nitin Gadkari who said that in order to flourish a society required robust cultural activities along with science and technology. “Besides the civic infrastructure that the city is getting I also want it to have good avenues for development of education, sports and culture.”

Citing the efforts that go into making the festival happen, Dr Chandrashekhar Meshram, who is the chairman of the Orange City Cultural Foundation, which organizes the festival, said, “Last year when we launched the festival, we had to spend up to Rs 25 lakhs from our own resources as NMC could not help us due to elections. I request Nitin Gadkari to help us with Rs 25 lakhs for the third edition so that we can concentrate on other aspects of organizing it.” This year, the festival collaborated with NMC and NU but Gadkari said, “I had thought the organizers do not require funds. They have collaborated with NMC and NU which too are cash-strapped,” while promising some help next year.

Earlier in a chat with Ajay Gampawar, Rohini Hattangadi spoke at length about her career milestones like roles in ‘Arth’, ‘Saranash’ and the Oscar winning film ‘Gandhi’. “Playing Kasturba very early in my career did impact the kind of roles that were offered to me later,” she said while speaking about her being typecast in maternal roles where she played mother to actors like Amitabh Bachchan and Dharemendra who were much elder to her.

“I have never waited for a good role to happen as I feel that it is the actor who has the ability to make any role good,” she said while expressing her desire to play

Lady Macbeth

some day.

The festival which saw the presence of stalwarts like Malayalam filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan and many new age Marathi directors like Sandeep Sawant also had an interaction with Prasad Namjoshi, Paritosh Pradhan and Amar Bharat Deokar who discussed the past present and future of Marathi cinema in a session anchored by film critic Samar Nakhate. Sandeep Sawant’s latest film ‘Nadi Wahate’ was also screened.

Speaking to the media on the sides of the screening, Sawant whose previous film ‘Shwas’ released 13 years back said, “It took me so long to make this one as I decided to make it myself and had to organize funding and do research which was intense.” Explaining why he chose the subject of rivers the filmmaker said, “A variety of serious issues are connected with rivers and they involve almost every strata and segment of society.” Sawant is not releasing the film in theatres but plans to take it to every taluka and village. “I want the film to have deep and wide penetration and hope that word by mouth publicity will create the right buzz for it.”