Asia's first International Digital Film Festival inaugurated

Basharat Peer in New Delhi

Asia's first film festival for content made on digital format, ITC Digital Talkies International Film Festival, was inaugurated at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on March 26 by Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Sushma Swaraj.

The festival opened with Lone Scherfig's Italian for Beginners, a Danish film. The film is about a group of single people, in a provincial Danish town, signing up for a evening classes in Italian. On a study tour to Italy, they realise that language isn't that important after all.

The film had won a Silver Bear in the Berlin Film Festival.

The man behind Digital Talkies is none other than internationally reputed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, whose Elizabeth did India proud in Hollywood.

"We are about to enter a new era of filmmaking. Digital filmmaking is the biggest revolution in cinema. A revolution that will lead to shedding of formality and beginning of informality, shedding of dependence and beginning of independence," Festival director, Shekhar Kapur said.

"This is going to be an era where films are not going to be made for the masses, but by the masses," he added.

Shekhar went on to predict that in the next five or six years, all the big films will be made on the digital format.

"It is a new universe in which you do not have to belong to that elite club I spend 12 years of life trying to get into, to make films. Digital format is about an era were anybody can go and make films"

But how will people get to see these films? Guardian's film critic and president of International Film Critics Association, Derek Malcom told rediff.com, "Internet and film festivals is the answer. These films will not really reach masses the way a Bollywood film reaches, but they will reach a section of people who appreciate serious cinema and even students."

Malcom adds, "With the digital format, more young people will get the chance of making films at a lesser cost about subjects, which they could not earlier, because of the confines of censorship, financing etc. It will lead to a new wave of radical filmmaking in India."

But he fears once these daring filmmakers are noticed, Bollywood may ruin them by offering them big money, the way Hollywood did to sensible British filmmakers.

Derek Malcom is a member of the jury for this competitive film festival, which is going to showcase approximately 50 films from UK, USA, Germany, Holland, India, Canada and Sweden. Other members of the jury include Shyam Benegal, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and some more foreign digital filmmakers.

Out of the Indian entries in the festival, the notables are Umrao Jaan (the tale of a prostitute), Muzzaffer Ali's Shawl ( a poignant tale of a young woman's attachment to a shawl) and Pankaj Advani's Urf Professor (a black comedy about a portly hit man in the underbelly of the Bombay underworld.)

The festival will go on till March 30, 2001. But that is not the end of the Digital Talkies.

It plans to set up a state of art studio for digital filmmaking, animation and special effects in India and promote Indian talent by providing a showcasing and distribution platform, thereby building a community of talented digital filmmakers.

Besides Shekhar Kapur, Adman, Suhel Seth and industrialist Hari Bhartia, are also part of the venture.