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Portugal salutes Bollywood
Portugal's biggest film festival will include a focus on successful Bollywood films over the past two decades during its next edition in 2005.
Portugal's biggest film festival will include a focus on successful Bollywood films from India over the past two decades during its next edition in 2005, organisers said on Friday.
The Oporto International Film Festival, which will run for two weeks from February 21, will feature between 15 and 25 feature films from India, in what will be its 25th edition, festival organizers said in a statement.
"The objective of this edition is to reveal to the public at large the work of the biggest cinema factory in the world, a giant Asian Hollywood on the margins of the Ganges," the statement said.
Popularly known as Fantasporto, the event is rated by the professional entertainment magazine Variety as one of the top 60 film festivals in the world. Held each year in Portugal's second-largest city Oporto, the festival attracted more than 100,000 filmgoers last year and over 100 journalists.
Among the Indian films expected to be screened at its next edition are the musical Devdas, a classic tale of doomed love set in a make-believe world of glittering palaces which has been billed as the most expensive Hindi commercial film ever made, and the Oscar-nominated Lagaan.
The Indian film industry based in Bombay, known as Bollywood, turns out hundreds of movies each year, but only a few are shown in mainstream theatres in Europe.
About Oporto International Film Festival
The Oporto International Film Festival, now going to its 25th edition, specializes in fantasy and science-fiction films. This Festival also includes the 15th New Directors Week with an Official Competition and a Retrospective section.
The Festival’s director, Mário Dorminsky, is preparing, with the help of the Portuguese Film Institute, a programme with Portuguese Films for the benefit of the foreign guests in Fantasporto. The festival runs and screens nearly new 200 feature films each year.
