Mumbai International Film Festival to open on 3 February, 2014

Organisers of the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) 2014 have begun their countdown to the festival that is to go underway from 3 to 9 February 2014 at the NCPA. This was disclosed at the end of a review meeting that secretary, Information & Broadcasting Bimal Julka along with Joint Secretary (Films) Raghvendra Singh held with the festival director V S Kundu yesterday. Speaking on the occasion Julka said, “The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting is committed to promoting documentary and short films, and MIFF provides one of the best platforms for showcasing our film making talent. MIFF 2014 brings a lot of valuable content for film makers and cineastes.” This year MIFF-2014 has received 793 entries from 34 countries. Of these, 588 are for the National section while 205 are for the International Section. MIFF-2014 will also see an increased international participation from all across the globe. As part of an initiative to take cinema to the students, Cinekids, Amsterdam and Lennep Media will hold a ‘Dutch Children’s film festival-cum-students film workshop’ for school children of Mumbai. On the other hand, ActionAid will hold a film festival on ‘Our City, Ourselves’ as part of MIFF 2014. Among the awards, a veteran Indian documentary filmmaker will be honoured with the V Shantaram Lifetime Achievement Award. Apart from the regular awards, new awards have been introduced this year for producer, cinematographer, editor, sound recordist and animator. Awards for the most innovative film (named after Pramod Pati) and most popular film of the festival have also been instituted, taking the total number of awards to 32 from 22 (in the MIFF 2012). A veteran Indian documentary film maker will be honoured with V Shantaram Lifetime Achievement Award. MIFF will distribute cash awards worth Rs. 55 lakh apart from Golden Conches, trophies and certificates to the winners in different categories. In another new initiative, the Festival Directorate has decided to hold parallel screenings of national competition films in Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Guwahati and Nagpur, for the benefit of documentary film lovers, who are unable to travel to Mumbai to participate in the festival. The festival will pay tribute to acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Peter Wintonick who passed away on 18 November this year by screening some of his select works. The Government of Maharashtra and the Indian Documentary Producers’ Association (IDPA) are the partners of MIFF 2014.