Having learnt a lesson from the controversies erupting from the alleged over-importance to the Bollywood in the last year’s International Film Festival of India (IFFI), the 38th edition of the festival in Goa starting from November 23 would be shorn of any such glamour-laden shows.

  The first meeting of the organising committee for IFFI-2007, held on Thursday under the chairmanship of Information & Broadcasting Minister P R Dasmunsi, virtually decided to focus on quality cinema and not on glamour. 

“The focus will be on the opening film and closing films. There will be no entertainment programme at these functions.

The awards ceremony will be held at the closing function. This would be followed by the screening of the closing film,” an official statement said after the meeting.
The meeting reviewed the level of preparedness for festival, and took  note of the fact that with the building of two new theatres with a seating capacity of 300 seats and upgradation of two public theatres would make another 400 seats available for the festival.

The total number of delegates to be registered has been fixed in proportion to the availability of theatre seats and the Goa government has been requested to screen the applications of local delegates and forward them to DFF for final approval.

 The registration system for all delegates has been made completely on-line this time, and for the first time a ticketing system has been introduced whereby every delegate would have to book in advance for any films that he/she would like to see. A maximum of three tickets for every delegate and five for every media person would be issued.

Indian Retrospectives in the festival will showcase films of Tapan Sinha and Vijay Anand, while homages section will focus on cinematographer K K Mahajan, actress Vanamala Devi and music director O P Nayyar.