Srinagar, May 23 (KNS): Due to the prevailing situation of COVID 19 across the World the ‘Management Committee’ of ‘Kashmir World Film Festival’ has taken a decision of postponing the 5th Edition of the festival which was scheduled to start from 10th June 2020. This decision was taken after the consultation with the esteemed members of ‘Advisory Board’ of KWFF. The decision about the new dates for holding the ‘5th’ Edition of KWFF will be taken in August or September 2020.
Our spirits are high !
A statement issued to KNS reads, Kashmir World Film Festival is the first Intellectual Property of its kind and magnitude in Kashmir and since July 2017, we have successfully conducted ‘4’ Editions of this festival.
Our endeavour is to bring this festival in the list of top 10 film festivals of the world, to empower the Kashmiri youth and film enthusiasts with film making knowledge for success in their careers and to empower the Kashmiri business fraternity with film production based tourism business.
In our previous editions held in Srinagar, we have felicitated the film celebrities like Tabu, Madhur Bhandarkar, Rajit Kapur, Raju Ji Chadha, Rahul Mitra, Saeed Mirza, Govind Nihalani, Imam Siddiqui, Preeti Sapru, Arjuman Mughal, Rahul Bhat, Imran Khan, Ved Rahi, Sateesh Kaul, Vani Tripathi, and others.
So far in our last four editions we received more than 460 (Four hundred sixty) films and out of those only 136 films were screened, that included films from 15 (fifteen) countries like, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Lebanon, Nepal, Poland, Spain, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, etc. We also had participating films from different parts of India in different languages like Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Dogri, English, Guajarati, Gurung, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kuchi, Ladakhi, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Tibetan and Urdu.
Some of the Classic and Popular films screened in different editions included the films like : Do Bigha Zamin, Guide, Bajrangi Bhaijan, Dangal, Kabuliwala, Mainz Raat, Bicycle Thieves, Citizen Kane, Life is Beatiful, 12 Angrymen, Andaz, Shree 420, Beynd the clouds, Naya Daur, Parmany, Jagte Raho, and Laila Majnoon.
So far 30 (Thirty) films from abroad and India have been awarded. The number of people who attended our Festival so far has been more than 15,500 (Fifteen thousand five hundred), mostly of them youth.
In addition to this, interaction with the writers/directors/actors, film making workshops, Master Classes on various aspects of films are also held, in which 672 students have participated so far. Most of these include the boys and girls from different colleges and Universities of different districts of Kashmir like, Anantnag, Baramulla, Budgam, Pulwama, and Srinagar.
The Advisory Board formed for the Festival include the personalities like, Anjum Rajabali, Anubhav Sinha, Archana Kapoor, Arunaraje Patil, Ashok Kaul, Govind Nihalani, Sayyed Humayun Qaisar, Komal Nahata, Narendra Mohan, O P Sharma, Pankaj Saxena, Premendra Majumdar, Raj Bansal, Rahul Mitra, Rajit Kapur, Raju Ji Chadha, Salim Arif, Santosh Sivan, Sarvdeep Singh, Saeed Mirza and Vinod Kapoor.
For extending full support and cooperation, we want to put on records our gratitude to the prestigious Film organisations like Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), National Film Archives of India (NFAI), Films Division (FD), and Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI).
Last but not least, we are very much thankful to the prestigious media houses at the local level, national level as well as at the international level for their tremendous support by giving detailed coverage of our festival through print, electronic and digital media. The countries other than India, where the news of our festival was covered include USA, China Iran, Qatar, Bangladesh and others. (KNS)
