With what promises to be its most ambitious slate yet, the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (http://indianfilmfestival.org) has announced its impressive 2012 lineup. 33 features, documentaries, and short films will be screened from filmmakers throughout the world including Canada, Italy, India, Germany, South Africa, UK, and the U.S. Among the offerings are three world premieres, nine U.S. premieres and twelve Los Angeles premieres. This is a banner year for the festival as it celebrates its ...

It is a paradox that one of the world's finest filmmakers  Bertrand Tavernier has been bestowed with the IFFI  Lifetime Achievement Award by a country that makes and screens the largest number of films  in the world, but has never  shown a film by Tavernier."Film-makers are selfish, we want everyone  to see our films," said the snowy haired monsieur from  France, underlining his "privilege to be honoured in a country that has so rich a cinematic culture." And ...

Sholay (Embers)                          PHILIPJI --I watched the complete Sholay last night, and can easily see why it is such a landmark film in India,but --if you are not familiar with the iconic personalties of Amitji, Dharamji, Sanjeev Kumar, and Hema Malini -- it would just be a long Spaghetti Western with Masala sauce, fairly primitive in parts (Like the unerring accuracy of the shots by the dynamic Duo --every single shot drops ...

BOLLYWOOD AND BEFOREIndia has an extremely prolific film industry turning out anything between 700 and 800 films a year, with peaks sometimes reaching more than 900! (905 in 1985, for example.) Most of these films are produced in regional centres in languages such as Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam... Indeed India is made up of 22 States and has 17 main languages. The Bollywood term covers films produced in Hindi in the Bombay studios. Although such films only account for a quarter of the total Indian...