Aamir may be chief guest at IFFI

The Information & Broadcasting Ministry is keen to have Aamir Khan, the only present-day Bollywood star to refuse participation in any masala film award function, as the chief guest at the International Film Festival of India in Goa starting from Nov 22, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 11, 2008, 24:16:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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If the Information & Broadcasting Ministry has its way, Bollywood watchers and fans will be treated to a never-seen-before sight — Aamir Khan at a film function.

The actor-director, who has two Oscar nominated films under his belt, is a front-runner to be the chief guest at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, starting November 22. The I&B Ministry is keen to have Khan, the only present-day Bollywood star to refuse participation in any masala film award function. “We want to showcase the Indian film industry as a hub of world cinema and he has such an image with his work,” said a senior ministry official.

The government has also zeroed in on Dada Saheb Phalka award winning director Shyam Benegal and actors Nasiruddin Shah and Nana Patekar for the opening ceremony.

“The final name for the chief guest will be decided in a couple of days,” said S.M. Khan, director, Directorate of Film Awards. The Directorate has decided to have two South-East Asian movies — Warlord by Peter Chang and My Magic by Erick Hoo — as the opening movies of the festival. Chang — who has made movies in Singapore, Hongkong and South Korea — will head the film jury to give away the Golden Peocock award. The closing film would be Iran’s Song of Sparrow.

IFFI also has some surprises. Switzerland’s official entry is Tandoori Love, a film directed by native Oliver Paulus but inspired by the Bollywood brand of cinema. Vijay Raaz plays the protagonist in this movie which has several other Indian stars.

The festival also has sections on Bimal Roy, selective films produced before 1950 and 75 years of Kannada cinema.If the Information & Broadcasting Ministry has its way, Bollywood watchers and fans will be treated to a never-seen-before sight — Aamir Khan at a film function.

The government has also zeroed in on Dada Saheb Phalka award winning director Shyam Benegal and actors Nasiruddin Shah and Nana Patekar for the opening ceremony.

The festival also has sections on Bimal Roy, selective films produced before 1950 and 75 years of Kannada cinema.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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