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New Delhi, 24 June 2008:

The 10^th Osians-Cinefan Film Festival announces the members of the six juries judging the competitive sections this year at the Festival, which runs from 10-20 July, 2008 in New Delhi.

The juries collectively include twenty-two distinguished individuals from the global film community, each of whom brings a unique perspective from every sphere of filmmaking. Esteemed directors, screenwriters, actors and cinematographers will together preside over the awards selection for the films in competition, deciding the winners in four categories - Asian & Arab, Indian, First Features and In-Tolerance. The awards will be announced on the evening of 19 July at the Closing Ceremony of the Festival.

The six juries for the 10^th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival are:

Asian Arab – President of the Jury - Christine Hakim (Indonesia), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Wu Nien-jen (Taiwan), Kais al Zibaidi (Palestine) and Ketan Mehta (India).

Indian Competition – Rada Sesic (Netherlands), Jeffrey Jeturian (Philippines), Sai Paranjpye (India), Abolfazal Jalili (Iran) and Mohammad Bakri (Israel).

First Features – Tony Rayns (UK), Nagesh Kukunoor (India) and Vimukthi Jayasundara (Sri Lanka).

In-Tolerance – Saed Ebrahimifar (Iran), Bappaditya Bandopadhyay (India) and Gonul Donmez-Colin (Turkey).

NETPAC – Martine Therouanne (France), Ed Lejano (Philippines) and Arun Khopkar (India).

FIPRESCI – Adrienne Mc Kibbins (Australia), Mohammad Gallaoui (Morocco) and Meena Karnik (India).

“This year, as in the previous years we have a very fine line-up for juries. All of them are outstanding personalities with a keen understanding of the artistic and organizational aspects of cinema” says Latika Padgaonkar, Joint Festival Director, Osian’s-Cinefan.

Osian’s-Cinefan, organized by Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art in association with the Government of the NCT of Delhi has also announced over Rs. 1 Crore (approx. USD 250, 000) in Prize Money for its Competition Sections and Lifetime Achievement Awards. Of the four competitive sections, the In-Tolerance section has only been added this year and will include films that grapple with themes and stories centering on the intolerance of our times and on efforts made to combat or overcome it.

“We have a great collection of films – the best of the most recent from Asia and the Arab world and a few classics which have never been seen in India before”, states Indu Shrikent, Joint Festival Director, Osian’s-Cinefan.

Asian Arab Competition Jury Members:

Christine Hakim - The President of the Asian Arab Jury, she is one of Indonesia’s best-known and versatile actresses – and now a producer. Christine Hakim has acted in over 30 films and many television serials. A six-time recipient of Indonesia’s prestigious Piala Citra Award for Best Actress, she has been on the juries of several festivals and has received several honours and awards. UNICEF and UNESCO made her their Goodwill Ambassador, the French Government gave her two of their highest awards, Chevalier des Art et des Letters (1993) and Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2003), while the Indian Government conferred on her the Jawaharlal Nehru Award in 1993. Through her charitable organization, The Christine Hakim Foundation set up in 1999, Christine Hakim supports social and educational work in Indonesia. Osian’s-Cinefan pays her a tribute with the screening of four films.

Chantal Akerman - Belgian scriptwriter-cinematographer-actress-producer Chantal Akerman is above all a prolific director. She was inspired to make films when she saw Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou at the age of fifteen, and made her first short film three years later. Self-taught and individualistic, she is known for a personal style of filmmaking with minimal plot and dialogue and with themes about the passage of time that represent her observations of identity, sexuality and politics. Chantal Akerman is one of the most important directors of her generation in Europe. State of the World, a portmanteau film of which she is one of the six directors is being screened at this edition of Osian’s-Cinefan.

Wu Nien-jen - Born in 1952, Wu Nien-jen started writing short stories for newspapers in 1975. After he wrote his first screenplay in 1978, he joined the Central Motion Picture Corporation as a creative supervisor and worked with leading Taiwanese New Wave directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. With over 90 screenplays that were made into films, he is one of the leading artists of the Taiwanese Cinema. He has also won the prestigious Golden Horse Awards several times, and is one of Taiwan’s best selling authors. Two films directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien and scripted by Wu Nien-jen – Dust in the Wind and A City of Sadness – will be shown at Osian’s-Cinefan.

Kais Al-Zubaidi - Kais Al-Zubaidi studied photography and editing in Germany. He has directed a number of documentary and narrative films about Palestine, some of which have won awards. Al-Zubaidi is also the author of the book Palestine in the Cinema published by the Institute for Palestine Studies and is an archive of the history of Palestinian cinema and lists over 800 films produced by Palestinian, Arab and non-Arab artists about Palestine and the Palestinian people. Kais al-Zubaidi has also worked intermittently with the PLO film unit in Beirut.

Ketan Mehta - Born in 1952, renowned Indian director, scriptwriter, producer Ketan Mehta was educated in New Delhi, studied Economics and then turned to cinema, graduating in direction from the Film and Television Institute of India. He has made innumerable feature films, documentaries and television series. Many of these award-winning works handle themes such as romance, violence and rebellion. He has been on the jury of various national and international film festivals. His films A Touch of Spice and The Rising have been shown at Osian’s-Cinefan. This year, Rang Rasiya is part of the festival programme.

Indian Competition Jury Members:

Rada Sesic - Born in Croatia, Rada Sesic is a noted film critic, script writer and director. She is a selector of South Asian films for the Sarajevo Documentary Programme and Rotterdam Festival and also programmes for the Kerala and Bucharest festivals. She is also on the Selection Committee of the Hubert Bals Fund. Rada has served on various international juries. As a director, she has made four films, and has been a Guest Lecturer and teacher at different universities

Jeffrey Jeturian - One of the leading figures in the current resurgence of Philippine cinema, Jeffrey Jeturian was born in 1959 in Manila. He did a Communication Arts degree from the University of the Philippines and worked as a production assistant before embarking on a career as a script supervisor, production designer, assistant director and finally, film director. His film Bridal Shower was shown at Osian’s-Cinefan in 2004, followed by The Bet Collector in 2006 which won the Best Film, Best Actress and FIPRESCI awards. This, as well as some of his other works, were widely screened internationally.

Sai Paranjpye - One of India's acclaimed filmmakers, scriptwriters and theatre directors, she began her career at All India Radio in Pune where she became a popular compere of children’s programmes. From AIR, she moved to theatre and then to television and films. Her film career began with a docudrama The Little Tea Shop which won the Asian Broadcasting Union Award in Teheran. She has written and directed six award-winning features which have participated in many International Festivals. Sai Paranjpye was the Chairperson of the Children Films Society, Government of India, for six years. In 2006, she received the Padmabhushan, from the President of India, one of the country’s highest civilian honours.

Abolfazl Jalili - Director, producer, scriptwriter, editor, costume, production designer and a lover of painting and photography, Abolfazl Jalili was born in Saveh, Iran, in 1957. In the 70s, he and a group of amateur filmmakers called Free Cinema, made a number of films on Super 8. Thereafter, he moved full-time into making documentaries. His feature films and documentaries have won major awards at many international festivals.

Mohammed Bakri - Mohammed Bakri was born in the Arab village of Bi'ina in the Galilee in 1953. He studied acting and Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University, beginning his professional acting career first in the theatre and then on the screen. He later moved to roles in international productions, and won the Golden Leopard Award for his performance in Private. He has adapted, directed and acted in one-man plays and is a four-time recipient of the Best Actor Award and of the Palestine Prize for Cinema. Mohamad Bakri has also directed two documentary films, one of which, Since You Left, is part of this festival’s programme, as will be Haifa directed by Rashid Masharawi, for which Bakri received the Best Actor Award at Valencia in 1997.

First features Competition Jury Members:

Tony Rayns - Tony Rayns is a London-based film-maker, critic and festival curator with a special interest in East Asian cinema. He is a contributing editor of Sight and Sound magazine, and programmes for the London and Vancouver film festivals. He was awarded the 2004 Kawakita Prize for services to Japanese cinema.

Nagesh Kukunoor - Filmmaker, writer, producer and actor, Hyderabad-born Nagesh Kukunoor moved to Phoenix where he did his B.Tech and MS. He studied acting at the Warehouse Actor’s Theatre in Atlanta and attended workshops in film and television. In 1995 he co-produced and directed his first film, a short. He has experimented with several genres and has written the story and screenplay for all his features. His films Rockford, Three Walls and Dor have been screened at Osian’s-Cinefan.

Vimukthi Jayasundara - Born in Ratnapura in Southern Sri Lanka, Vimukthi Jayasundara is a filmmaker, journalist, critic and screenplay writer. He studied at the Film and Television Institute of India and obtained a grant to study in France. He was a student at the School of Art in Frensoy and later a resident at the Cannes Film Festival’s Cine foundation in 2003. He has also made short films. His first feature, The Forsaken Land, received an award at Osian’s-Cinefan in 2005.

In-Tolerance Jury Members:

Saeed Ebrahimifar - Actor, director, producer and screenwriter Saeed Ebrahimifar was born in Tehran in 1956. He studied civil engineering and communication in the US. His cinematic career began in 1984 and he made his first feature, Pomogranates and Cane, in 1989. A poet of cinema, his film Lonesome Trees shared the Special Jury Award with Making Of at Osian’s-Cinefan last year.

Bappaditya Bandopadhyay - Born in 1969, award-winning filmmaker Bappaditya Bandopadhyay graduated in Sociology from Calcutta University. In 2003, he received the Most Prominent Director Award from the Bengal Film Journalists Association, while his leading actress, Debashree Roy won the Kalakar Award in Bengal for her performance in Colours of Hunger. He writes regularly on cinema and is also a poet of repute. His award-winning films, Barbed Wire, Devaki and Our Time have had their world premieres in Osian’s-Cinefan.

Gonul Donmez-Colin - Writer, critic, researcher and lecturer, Gönül Dönmez-Colin studied at the Universities of Istanbul, Concordia and McGill. She has taught in Montreal and Hong Kong, having done field research in Iran, Turkey, India and Central Asia. She is the author of Women, Islam and Cinema, Cinemas of North Africa and Central Asia (ed.), and Turkish Cinema and Politics of Identity. She has written widely on the cinemas of Central Asia and Greece, been on juries, curated programmes on national cinemas, and is the Artistic Advisor of Mannheim-Heidelberg and the Kerala International Film Festivals.

NETPAC Jury Members:

Martine Therouanne - Martine Therouanne founded the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema in 1995 and has been its director ever since. This festival is entirely dedicated to the cinemas of Asia, from the Near East to the Far East. A literature graduate, she taught French before becoming a librarian. She has been an ardent supporter of auteur cinema and Asian cinema. For her dedication to culture and film she was honoured with the Chevalier des Arts in 2003.

Ed Lejano - Filmmaker, critic, Executive Committee Member of the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival from 2005-06, Ed Lejano has served as Deputy Director for its annual Independent Filmmaking Congress. He did an M.A. in Broadcast Communication from the University of the Philippines and obtained a Certificate in Film from New York University. He is currently Programme Director for Film at the International Academy of Film & Television, Cebu and has been teaching at the University of the Philippines Film Institute since 1998. He has been a jury member at international film festivals.

Arun Khopkar - An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India, Arun Khopkar has made over 30 short films which include films on painting, dance, music and poetry, many of them award-winning. His feature film, A Tale of Two Ganpatraos, has been shown at various international festivals. He is an internationally recognized authority on Eisenstein, while his book on Guru Dutt has won the award for the best book on cinema at the National Festival. Arun Khopkar has lectured at many institutes and universities and has been on the jury of several film festivals. He knows German, French, Russian and several Indian languages including Sanskrit.

FIPRESCI Jury Members:

Adrienne Mc Kibbins - Adrienne Mc Kibbins is currently the Executive Officer and Awards Manager of the Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA). She has closely followed Asian cinema for many years and organized the first touring season of Chinese films to Australia. She has been involved with the India Film Festival since its inception in Australia and is currently a research consultant for a documentary on films and filmmakers of the Asia Pacific region, particularly the section on India cinema.

Meena Karnik - Meena Karnik, who has been in journalism for twenty-five years, is the editor of a Marathi eveninger, Aapla Mahanagar. She has a weekly column in the newspaper in which she covers a variety of subjects ranging from films, film personalities and issues concerning women and children. She has attended and written on film festivals for several years.

Mohamed Gallaoui - Mohamed Gallaoui is the President of the Film Critics Association of Morocco and Professor of Political Science at the Hasan II University in Casablanca. He has authored several works on cinema, serves on the editorial board of the review Cinema, and was formerly on the editorial committee of the communications review, Vision. He is currently a member of the commission that supports production funding at the Moroccan Cinema Centre. Mohamed Gallaoui has been on the jury of national and international film festivals.

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