A wave of nostalgia warms the hearts at IFFI on day 4

Panaji: Nostalgia visited Goa, after a good 61 years! A restored 4K version of the 1962 classic, Bees Saal Baad, directed by Biren Nag, was screened, taking the audience into a time capsule.

Coming out of the retro screening, filmmaker Ketan Anand said he was very excited to watch his father Chetan Anand's Haqeeqat that was lined up next, again in restored 4K.

"It's great for us to have our history shown in retrospect to all the coming generations; and that is possible only when something like this happens and they're doing a fantastic job," he added.

The National Film Heritage Mission, along with the National Film Archive of India, have been working on the restoration of old Indian films frame by frame. The festival is showing 10 such restored films from across languages.

Earlier, the 54th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) began Day 4 with the screening of the Kazakhstan film, Mountain Onion. Directed by Eldar Shibanov, Mountain Onion is a quirky and touching tale of two children travelling from Kazakhstan to China to obtain Viagra pills to save their parents' marriage.

Oscar talks

The conference rooms were thick with cerebral discussions on various cinematic themes. Guneet Monga, Oscar-winning producer, and Resul Pookutty, Oscar-winning sound designer, took centre stage with Carter Pilcher, Head of Shorts TV and a voting member at the Academy, at a discussion titled, The Road to the Oscars.

The enlivening discussion had references to personal experiences regarding the coveted Academy Awards. Pookutty questioned why people were so fixated about the Oscars. "One should question why our films are not going to Cannes or Berlin," he said.

Guneet felt only films with an American distributor have made it to the nominations and as well as won an award.

Documentary dilemma

The neglected field of documentary filmmaking made it to the dias, with those behind the camera and script of these non-commercial, non-fiction films ruing on the lack of schools with courses dedicated to this discipline.

The panelists for the discussion included documentary filmmakers, Kartiki Gonsalves, Nilotpal Majumdar, Sai Abishek and R V Ramani.

The filmmakers stressed the need for a sustained discourse around documentaries. However, they were not too forthcoming to answer questions from the audience, who left the venue disappointed. Even a question as simple as "Which is your favourite documentary?" went unanswered.