Curtains have been set for the Golden Elephant, 19th International Children’s Film Festival, India to be jointly hosted by Children’s Film Society, India and Government of Telangana at Hyderabad starting 14th November 2015.
19th ICFFI, a week-long festival, has many firsts in this edition that truly enhances its International profile. Also many innovative digital experiences for the children to learn from are in store. Moreover, this edition of 19th ICFFI, has a special section called Asian Panorama, showcasing Asian Films. In one of the many firsts, 19th ICFFI received international entries for their Little Directors concept that was introduced as an innovation in the previous edition of ICFFI.
Dr. Shravan Kumar, Festival Director, 19th ICFFI, Golden Elephant said, “Our Golden Elephant, 19th ICFFI will be unique in more than one ways. Over the last few years, we have tirelessly worked towards making this festival more and more interesting, bringing in innovative practices and continuously improving and up scaling its international flavour. The efforts paid off when we received a whopping 1204 entries from 80 countries across the world, highest ever by any ICFFI so far. And, we won’t stop here. In this festival, we have some unique digital experiences for the children, we will be launching a Mobile App of CFSI and will be showcasing a number of Asian films under our newly curated section called Asian Panorama.”
Mukesh Khanna, Chairman, Children’s Film Society, India said, “I think it’s a great opportunity for the children of our country to watch the films made by the different countries’ film makers exclusively for the kids. Even I am looking forward to the Festival.”
In the 19th edition of ICFFI, many International Award winning films have been received by CFSI. This festival aims to involve the Government, Bureaucracy, Film fraternity, Celebrities and other eminent people of Media and Arts from India and abroad towards enhancing the children’s participation towards film making and thereby exploiting their creative faculties to the fullest in nation-building.
“Our innovations this year have digital installations that will provide the children with a wholesome experience. One such installation ‘Selfie with Dr. Kalam,’ will allow children to take ‘Selfies with Dr. Kalam, while another installation of ‘CROMagic’ will make them feel how their Superhero flies in the air. Similarly, other installations like ‘The Evolution’ will take them through the era of motion pictures and ‘The BIG Picture’ will have a live size working model of a DSLR Camera where visitors can interact with the device and capture their first musings among many such Digital installations,” adds Dr. Shravan Kumar, Festival Director, 19th ICFFI, Golden Elephant.
CFSI was represented in Berlin Film Festival for exploring the possibility of marketing Indian children films abroad by participating in the European Film Market (EFM) and it was met with huge success.
‘Gattu’ was also the first commercially released film of CFSI. Berlin Film Festival where Gattu was given a Special Mention by International Jury at Generation Berlinale 2012. While, CFSI’s film ‘Pappu Ki Pugdandi’ was also officially selected for the Toronto International Film Festival Kids 2015 edition that was organised from 7th to 19th April, 2015 in Toronto, Canada.
CFSI has been making films for Indian market since its inception and this would be a collective effort to reach market internationally and make much better cinema which would be entertaining as well as educative.
CFSI was setup in 1955 and since then it has produced, exhibited and distributed over 250 films for children including feature films, short films, animations, television episodes and documentaries. (INN)