Lonavala film festival to pay tribute to legendary filmmaker Shakti Samanta

Legendary filmmaker Shakti Samanta will be paid glowing tributes at the sixth edition of the Lonavala International Film Festival India (LIFFI) 2021.

A legendary director and producer, Samanta (January 13, 1926 – April 9, 2009), is well known for films like ‘Howrah Bridge’, ‘Insan Jaag Utha’, ‘China Town’, ‘Kashmir Ki Kali’, ‘An Evening in Paris’, ‘Aradhana’, ‘Kati Patang’, ‘Amar Prem’, ‘Amanush’ and ‘Barsaat Ki Ek Raat’.

The festival would run online from September 24 to 26, October 1 to 3 and October 8 to 10, from 6 pm every day.

The director of the festival is Madhav Todi and the curator is Viveck Vaswani.

Eminent film personalities -- including Ashim Samanta, Sandip Soparrkar, Pooja Desai, Brahmanand Singh, Jyotin Goel, Tushar Bhatia and Divya Solgama -- will take part in the pre-screening discussions which will highlight why the films are classics.

One film will be streamed each day and in total, nine feature films will be shown throughout the tenure of the festival.

The opening and closing films of the festival are 'An Evening in Paris' and 'Pancham Unplugged'.

“We did not let the pandemic break our spirit last year and conducted the festival online. The overwhelming participation strengthened our resolve and hence we are conducting the festival online this year as well. We want to continue our endeavour of entertaining and edutaining the people of India with interesting films and interactive panel discussions with experts,” said Todi.

The first weekend of the festival will be a 'Shammi Kapoor Special' with the screening of his evergreen films like 'An Evening in Paris', 'Kashmir Ki Kali' and 'China Town' while the second weekend will take people through Rajesh Khanna’s romantic journey and will screen some of his films like 'Aradhana', 'Kati Patang' and 'Amar Prem'.

The third weekend will have a mix of films and will showcase - 'Barsaat Ki Ek Raat', 'Amanush' and 'Pancham Unplugged'.