12th Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival Kicks off in Delhi

The 12th Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival opened at Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi on July 27, 2012 with a Japanese animation film, Asura. The film festival paid a tribute to superstar Rajesh Khanna through a montage of popular songs and dialogues from his films.

The festival runs from July 27 to August 5 and will screen over 175 films from 38 participating countries of Asia and the Arab world, 125 of the films being world premieres.

The start of the 10-day Festival brought back memories of a time when Siri Fort played host to the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) every January. Eight years ago, the Festival found a permanent home in Goa’s Panaji, on the banks of the Mandovi. Has Panaji been able to capture the spirit and essence of Delhi? This is a question that has been haunting not only the Directorate of Film Festivals, which organizes IFFI, but all those innumerable movie buffs who treated the Festival as a kind of annual cinema pilgrimage and Delhi as its focal point.

Osian’s Cinefan plans a global summit in the coming days on whether Delhi is India’s next film city. The Directorate and IFFI — and many, many others — would be keenly watching this.