What's up this October?

Sudhish Kamath

First Ahmedabad and then Mumbai. The best films of the season are coming to India, one whole month ahead of International Film Festival of India, Goa, which for long had been the festival that premiered the latest crop of films from around the world.

While Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) is opening its festival (October 13-20) with the much-acclaimed Brad Pitt-starrer Moneyball and is boasting of bringing Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, Wim Wender's Pina and George Clooney's Ides of March, the younger International Film Festival of Ahmedabad (October 6-9) that focusses on independent films, is bringing the Sundance Audience award winner HappyThankYouMorePlease, written and directed by Josh Radnor, retrospectives of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Anurag Kashyap (including the formerly banned Paanch).

Soundtrack, the Rajeev Khandelwal-Soha Ali Khan starrer, the official remake of It's All Gone Pete Tong, will be the opening film at Ahmedabad on October 6. The festival will be releasing five films from its programming slate in association with PVR to woo independent filmmakers.

"Every filmmaker wants to show his film in theatres to the public and normally independent films are turned down by the distributors. We understand this well and want IFFA to bridge that gap by pioneering such initiatives that will make IFFA the Sundance of the East in the coming years," says Founder of IFFA and festival director Shiladitya Bora.

Platform for buyers

MAMI, on the other hand, is organising a Film Mart between October 15 and October 17 to provide a platform for buyers to meet filmmakers during the festival.

Movie buffs at MAMI will get an opportunity to interact with filmmaker Hugh Hudson (I Dreamed of Africa and Revolution Revisted) and Korean director Na Hong Jin (The Chaser and The Yellow Sea) who are in the jury of the international film competition, while cinephiles at Ahmedabad will get a chance to run into local indie heroes Nagesh Kukunoor and Anurag Kashyap.

Both Mumbai and Ahmedabad film festivals have screenwriting workshops to be conducted by screenwriter Anjum Rajabali.

To get delegate passes for the Mumbai Film Festival, register online at www.mumbaifilmfest.com before October 5 for a 25 per cent discount and for passes for the International Film Festival, Ahmedabad, register at www.ifilmfest.in

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article2503599.ece

Script is king, swears Rajeev

Oct 02, 2011 - Priyanka Bhadani |

• The Asian Age

Actor Rajeev Khandelwal doesn't think big budgets, big banners or acclaimed directors are synonymous with good films. A good script clubbed with good performance and good treatment by the filmmaker can do the trick.

He shifted to the film industry with Aamir, after a successful stint on the small screen, with a new director. And now, debutante Neerav Ghosh is directing Rajeev's upcoming film Soundtrack.
Rajeev, who was in the capital recently to shoot for a show on super cars that will be aired on National Geographic Channel, says that a good script matters the most to him. In fact, he didn't do a film in the last two years because he wanted to do something interesting and challenging. "I was grateful when Aamir was appreciated. I wanted to do a film that can be watched over and over again for many years. It takes time to hunt for scripts that hold such quality," says Rajeev, talking about why he has done very few films till date. His last appearance was in the two-month-old Shaitan.
Talking about Soundtrack, he says, "It's a very interesting film. It doesn't have the clichd style of narrating the story. I play the character of a small town guy who comes to Mumbai with big dreams. He becomes a sound recorder but at the height of his career, he is detected with a hearing disorder. It's his story of overcoming the catastrophe."
And while his co-actor Soha, who is portraying the character of a born-deaf girl , researched her role, Rajeev chose to go by whatever the director told him about his role. "I imagined the situation and worked according to that," he says.
He is also looking forward to the Super Cars series. The actor says that he is in awe of super cars from the moment he got to know about the technicalities involved. "It was super exciting to shoot with these beauties. I was going mad and wild," he quips. But his fascination is only for the cars. He confesses that unlike many he has never really been a bike freak. "But I dream of a trip to Ladakh on a bike," he says.

http://www.asianage.com/life-and-style/script-king-swears-rajeev-445

'Soundtrack' To Be Premiered At Ahmedabad Film Fest

Soundtrack, the forthcoming flick, which revolves around a hedonistic DJ who goes deaf following a life of debauchery is to be premiered at the Ahmedabad International Film Festival on October 6, 2011.

The festival, an annual feature of Ahmedabad, started as FulMarxx Shorts Fest in 2007 and subsequently evolved into International Film Festival Ahmedabad showcasing Retrospectives, WorldCinema, Indian Panorama, Cinema of Gujarat, Children Films and Short Films.
 
Soundtrack starring Rajeev Khandelwal and Soha Ali Khan and produced by Saregama is an official remake of Canadian cult movie It's All Gone Pete Tong.

http://www.movietalkies.com/news/10544/%27soundtrack%27-to-be-premiered-at-ahmedabad-film-fest