SRINAGAR: In a major recognition for Kashmir Cinema, a Kashmiri feature film has won an international award at Canada International Film Festival 2013, a first for any local movie.
‘Partav’, meaning influence, has won the Award of Excellence in Canada International Film Festival 2013 in feature film category.
‘Partav’, the first Kashmiri film shot entirely in the 35mm digital format, is a story of a professor who forsakes everything in his life to devote himself to his literary pursuits.
The film revolves around the ideology that “a life lived for others is a life worth living”. In fact, this Albert Einstein quote is the catch-line of the one-hour-and-fifty-minutes film, which became the first Kashmiri film to receive any international recognition.
The Canada International Film Festival, held each year in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, brings the very best of world cinema to Canada from over 90 countries around the world.
The 2013 edition will be held April 5th to 6th, 2013 at Edgewater Casino in downtown Vancouver. This year’s Festival Programme will showcase a wide variety of North American and International Feature Films to thought-provoking Shorts, Documentaries, Music Videos, Animations, Experimental Films, Student Films, a Screenplay Competition, and more.
Proud
Listed at number six in the 2013 Award of Excellence Winners – Feature Competition category, ‘Partav’ has made proud not only its makers, but the whole community here.
“It is a big achievement and not only for us, but for the people of Kashmir as well,” the director of the film Dilnawaz Muntazir told PTI.
The filmmaker said the recognition means “a lot to the team behind the film” and described it as an achievement for the cinema in Kashmir in particular and to Kashmiri language in general.
Muntazir, 35, who has been invited to attend the award ceremony, expressed hope that the film and the recognition it got will revive the “otherwise non-existent” cinema in the valley and would inspire many youngsters to take up filmmaking.
“Filmmakers here are very much apprehensive about making films in Kashmiri and the potential of the language (to attract global audience). It will change that and encourage them and many youngsters to be optimistic and help revive the film culture here,” Muntazir, a dental surgeon by profession, said.
No Support
However, the filmmaker says “all is not well” here when it comes to filmmaking. The young team faced a lot of problems and neglect during the production and post-production of the film, he said.
“The film was made on a budget of Rs 75 lakh. We arranged about 25 lakhs ourselves and raised the rest through loans and other sources. We approached many people and business houses here, but to no avail. Even the Cultural Academy did not help us in any way… There was no support,” he said.
The filmmaker said they had approached the state government for a premiere of the film, but received no response from them.
“There was no response from the government or Cultural Academy even for helping us with the premiere,” Muntazir said.
He also expressed hope that the government and business houses in the valley would come forward to help revive the Kashmiri Cinema, which, he said, is “otherwise dying a slow death”.
(PTI)
