http://www.musicindiaonline.com/n/m/main_page_news/340/

Indian wins at C'wealth film fete
By IANS
May 12, 2004, 11:57


Mumbai, May 12 (IANS) Many said his film was too realistic to be liked by the masses. But now Partho Sen Gupta's "Hava Aney Dey" has bagged a best feature film award at an international festival.

Sen Gupta was awarded the BBC Audience Award for the Best Feature Film at the 3rd Commonwealth Film Festival this week.

The film had its international premiere at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival this year. It was awarded a special mention of the jury at the 28th Hong Kong International Film Festival.

The 3rd Commonwealth Film Festival in Manchester showed more than 200 features, shorts and documentaries. There were about 10 films from India, notably Gautam Ghosh's "Abar Aranye", Amol Palekars's "Anaahat" and Manish Jha's "Matrabhoomi".

Partho Sen Gupta's film "Hava Aney Dey" raised a lot of questions about its form and content. A lot of people felt the film was too realistic and that the director had been hard on modern, urban India.

Yet the film was voted as the Best Feature Film at the festival. The BBC Audience Award is the only award in this festival for feature films.

Sen Gupta said: "For me, cinema is for spectators and the audience, and though most professionals and distributors feel that my film is a 'non commercial product', the contrary has been proved.

"The audience wants to see something new and they gave me the award, in that way they are telling the distributors that they may be wrong in the choice of films that they make and put on screens. The audience has spoken."


© Copyright 2004 by MusicIndiaOnLine.com

Cool! But cannot find anything about this film on IMDb!