Festival greatly improved

Shri J. P. Singh Chief secretary of Goa, and Smt. Neelam Kapur Director, DFF, in a press conference held here today with a view to apprise the media of their assessment and also to elicit media response on various issues related to the Festival said that the 38th edition of International Film Festival of India has been a smooth affair but for minor irritants . Shri J. P. Singh said that the whole effort has been to improve film culture in the State so that Goa attains recognition at the international level. The joint effort of Directorate of Film Festival and the Govt of Goa greatly improved the content as well as infrastructure for the current edition of the fest he said. The Film Bazaar this year has been a tremendous success and hoped that National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) would further strengthen the role of Film Bazaar in future. The software used in the Festival this year has been a great leap forward and is likely to result in smoother operations in the coming years. The newly introduced system of ticketing was a great success and vastly facilitated the operations, he added. ‘Plans are already under discussion to bring about improvements during the next year. Steps for facilitation of delegate and media registration are being examined and would be put in place in due course. We need to work on improving the international participation in the Festival “ said Smt. Neelam Kapur ,Director of the Fetival. To the suggestion of raising prize money to invite larger international participation, it was among the measures being contemplated in this regard she added. She also clarified that mainstream cinema was taken off from this year’s Festival by the Film Federation of India and its affiliated bodies due to certain reservations/constraints on their part. Smt. Kapur felt that greater publicity is needed to ensure more entries in the Indian Panorama section so that the number of entries is larger and diversity of Indian cinema can be truly reflected. The publication of Festival daily news letter in Hindi will be looked into, the Director said.