by Lekha Shankar      With almost every city in India boasting of a film festival today, it’s difficult to know which ones to choose. But two film festivals seems a cut above the rest. The International Film Festival of India (IIFI),  is the oldest and biggest film festival in the country ,which is  held in late-November, in the scenic beach-town of Goa. It  has the glitter, glamour, and high-quality cinema that one associates with a top-range fest...

If there is one film that could indict the genocide-killers of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, who are currently being 'tried' under an International Tribunal ,which has already taken several years and cost nearly $ 150 million, it is this one. What's astonishing is that it has not been seen or used by the Tribunal as evidence, judging by the statements of some of the members of the Tribunal, who addressed the media ,at the FCCT in Bangkok recently.  The film is especially import...

  Even as one waits eagerly for French director Luc Besson's fictional film on Burmese freedom fighter Aung Sang Suu Kyi,'The Lady', with Maggie Cheung playing the lead,  a new, real-life docu film on Burma's most famous political leader 'Lady of No Fear' has won applause at many Human Rights Festivals, and will now do the rounds of many  international film festivals around the world .  Infact, it's told that Luc  Besson studied this  docu at length, before he began his ...

Watch out for a sensational,new Thai film 'Poompuang' (The Moon) that will be released in Bangkok tomorrow, and seems destined to be a mega-hit in Thailand. Why? Because it centres around the real-life story of the country's most famous 'luk thung' country music singer,whose dramatic, romantic, tragic rags-to-riches tale is superb stuff for cinema. Which is why this film is un-stoppable. Poompuang, the famous 60's singer, died suddenly and shockingly of lupus,at the ag...

  The 150th birth anniversary of India's Poet Laureate and probably the country's greatest literary genius, Rabindranath Tagore, is being celebrated around the world. Many of Tagore's stories have been translated into films,the best-known ones being by India's greatest film-maker ,Satyajit Ray -' Charulatha, Devi, Teen Kanya, Ghaire Bhaire.' Infact,Ray even made a memorable docu on Tagore, which was one of the highlights of a 2-day Seminar on Rabindranath Tagore, held at Bangk...

  The Thai-American film 'Bitter Sweet' won 2 top awards at the 42nd Annual Worldfest Houston International Film & Video Festival, which concluded last week-end-the Grand Jury Award for  Best Picture of the Year, and the Gold Remi Award for Best Director. With this, American Director Jeff Hare achieved a hat-trick,having won awards  for two of his earlier films ‘A Perfect Little Man’ and ‘Checking Out’, at the same festival. First-time producer Urs B...

It's interesting to know that a package of action-packed, 'Muay Thai' Thai boxing films are to screen at the East Udine Far East festival ( 24 April- 2 May). Among these are Ong Bak 2,the sequel to the film of the same title that pushed Tony Jaa to world-fame, as Thailand's own  Jackie Chaan/Bruce Lee.This is a pure action drama, with dialogues kept to the minimum,and Jaa proves he can do anything, anywhere- on land,air,even elephant-back! More thought-provoking, is 'Chocolate' which ...

‘CAMBODIA DREAMS’,  DIRECTED BY STANLEY HARPER LEKHA J. SHANKAR, Bangkok As the world watches the historic trials of the atrocious Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, this is a good time to watch a ‘life-affirming’  film on the country, by a New Zealand director, who spent two decades of his life, to make it. Stanley Harper’s 18-year-old cinematic odyssey ‘Cambodia Dreams’   is an amazing film in more ways than one. Apart from being made against all odds in a political...