Inspired by the "Red Roofs" segment from Dan Verete’s 2002 three-part Israeli drama Yellow Asphalt, which revolves around the lives of Bedouins in the Judean desert, the visually lush Before the Rains, which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, follows the self-destructive path of a British farmer intent on creating a "spice" road [...]
2007 Asian Film Awards
2007 Asian Film Award nominations: January 17, 2008.
2007 Asian Film Award winners: Grand Hall, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, March 17, 2008
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
Best Film
Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (Iran)
I Just Didn’t Do It (Japan)
Lust, Caution (Taiwan / China / USA)
* Secret Sunshine (South Korea)
The Sun [...]
2007 Asian Festival of 1st Films Awards
2007 Asian Festival of 1st Films: Singapore between November 27-December 4, 2007.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
Bhavna Talwar’s Dharm follows a devout Hindu Brahmin (Pankaj Kapur) who proclaims that, as a Brahmin, he belongs to the highest of castes. The Brahmin’s worldview changes radically after he develops [...]
One of the films screening at the 4th Dubai International Film Festival’s Celebration of Indian Cinema sidebar is Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s feature-film debut, Frozen, set in the Kashmiri Himalayas.
Written by Shanker Raman (from a story by Chandrabhushan), Frozen is the tale of a teenage girl who lives with her father and younger brother in a [...]
The 4th Dubai International Film Festival, which runs from December 9–16, will offer several world premieres, mostly in its Arabian Nights and Celebration of Indian Cinema sidebars.
Among the premieres are the Arabian Nights program gala, Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s Whatever Lola Wants, which stars Carmen Lebbos and Laura Ramsey (left) as, respectively, a legendary [...]
When not making movies, Indian film personalities seem to spend a lot of their time fighting one another in court.
Following the long soap opera revolving around allegations of bias and corruption at the National Film Awards, the Mumbai High Court has found the Film Federation of India’s (FFI) pick to represent the Indian film [...]
Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Bengali-language Kaalpurush - Memories in the Mist, the story of a mild-mannered office clerk (Rahul Bose) whose faltering career is counterbalanced by his wife’s sudden celebrity, received best feature film honors at the 53rd National Film Awards, covering Indian films produced in 2005.
The 53rd edition of the National Film Awards became mired in [...]
53rd Indian National Film Awards
The 53rd Indian National Film Award winners were announced on Aug. 7, 2007.
The 53rd Indian National Film Awards covers Indian films produced in 2005.
National Film Awards 2007 winners - Article
BEST FEATURE FILM: KAALPURUSH - MEMORIES IN THE MIST (BENGALI)
BEST FIRST FILM: PARINEETA (HINDI) by Pradeep Sarkar
BEST POPULAR FILM [...]
Karnataka State Film Awards - 2006-2007
The winners of the 2006-2007 Karnataka State Film Awards — the awards committee was headed by filmmaker Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar — were announced on July 20, 2007.
There were 37 films in competition. Karnataka is a state in southern India. Kannada is its most important language.
Best Film: Mungaru Male / Monsoon Showers
Runners-up: [...]
Via the Times of India:
"It’s a paradox that’s indicative of an emerging trend in Bollywood — the country’s pan-Indian film industry may make its movies in the national language but prefers to have its scripts written in a colonial one. In other words, no Hindi please, we prefer Angrezi.
"A veteran writer, who began writing [...]
As expected, the big winner at the 8th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards held Saturday night at the Hallam FM Arena in Sheffield, United Kingdom, was Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s political musical Rang De Basanti / Paint It Yellow, the tale of several alienated university students — among them Aamir Khan — who [...]
Next Saturday, June 9, the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) will announce the winners of the 8th IIFA Awards in the Popular Categories. The ceremony will be part of the International Indian Film Academy Weekend, which will take place between June 7-10 in Yorkshire. In addition to the IIFA awards ceremony, the IIFA Weekend will [...]
8th International Indian Film Academy Awards - IIFA Awards 2007
The 8th Indian Film Academy Award nominations in the Popular Categories were announced on April 30, 2007.
The 8th Indian Film Academy Award winners in the Popular Categories were announced at the Hallam FM Arena in Sheffield/Yorkshire on June 9, 2007.
The winners of the Technical Awards were [...]
In the paragraph below, the word "entrepreneurs" surely means "workers"
Press Release:
The Jeevika South Asia Documentary Festival, which began in 2003, aims at capturing the livelihood challenges faced by the rural and urban poor and bringing it to the attention of current and future policy makers. Over the years, Jeevika has been successful in advocating for [...]
The New York Film Critics Online went all for The Queen, voted the Best Film of 2006, in addition to citations for Best Director Stephen Frears, Best Screenplay for Peter Morgan, Best Actress Helen Mirren, and Best Supporting Actor Michael Sheen (who actually has a leading role in the film, but that’s how those things [...]
2006 Asian Festival of 1st Films Awards
2006 Asian Festival of 1st Films: Singapore between November 29-December 6, 2006.
Asian Festival of 1st Films 2006 Nominations - Brief Article
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
The Road portrays the lives of a provincial bus driver and his wife through four decades of recent Chinese history Director Zhang [...]
The biggest surprise found in the list of winners of the 2006 National Board of Review awards was the choice of Clint Eastwood’s View from the Other Side, the Japanese-language World War II drama Letters from Iwo Jima, as the Best Film of the year.
This marked only the third time that the NBR’s Best [...]
Via the Times of India:
”The government feels that some element of censorship is required to preserve our cultural bearings. How can public awards like the [National Film Awards] be given to a film that the people can’t watch in its original form?’
So says an official from India’s Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), apparently afraid [...]
Via the Associated Press / International Herald Tribune:
The producers of Rang De Basanti ("Color Me Saffron"), a huge box-office hit in India and that country’s entry for the upcoming Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, have asked "top defense officials" to take part in a short documentary to promote the potential Oscar contender.
Rang De [...]
Deepa Mehta’s Water, starring Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, and John Abraham, has been chosen as Canada’s entry for the 2006 Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award.
Set in the Indian holy city of Varanasi, the Hindi-language Water is now eligible as a Canadian entry for the foreign-language Oscar because of recent regulation changes enacted by [...]
One more award list from around the world:
Indian filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli’s Nayi Neralu, adapted from a novel by local writer S. L. Bairappa, has won the top award at the Kannada film awards this past Tuesday, Sept. 19. Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken in Southwestern India, mostly in the state of Karnataka. [...]
Karnataka State Film Awards - 2005-2006
The winners of the 2005-2006 Karnataka State Film Awards were announced on Sept. 19, 2006.
Karnataka is a state in southern India. Kannada is its most important language.
Karnataka State Film Awards 2006 Winners - Article
Best Film: Nayi Neralu by Girish Kasaravalli
Runner-up: Nenapirali by Ratnaja
Third Place: Amrutadhare by Nagatihalli [...]
Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman is set to open the first edition of the RomeFilmFest. Kidman will present the world premiere of Steven Shainberg’s Fur at the grand opening gala on October 13 in the Santa Cecilia Hall at the Auditorium Parco della Musica. Inspired by Patricia Bosworth’s book Diane Arbus – A Biography, Fur [...]
Rediff News has a list of the ten longest Hindi-language films. I’m not sure how accurate the list is, but it’s worth taking into consideration that as per the Rediff article, "the average Hindi flick regularly clocks in at about 3 hours, songs and all."
Among the entries are the Academy Award-nominated Lagaan (2001), directed [...]
The OSIAN-CINEFAN Film Festival’s Best Asian Film Award went to Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador / The Bet Collector, the story of a woman who makes a living collecting bets for an illegal game until her life takes a dramatic turn following the death of a neighbor. Kubrador also won the International Federation of Film Critics’ Best [...]
