Movie produced in Kolkata nominated for Polish Catholic film festival

New Delhi – Indians have set a precedent of sorts by contributing a new category to the Signis–Poland’s International Catholic Film and Multimedia Festival, Warsaw.

A film shot on webcam, produced in Kolkata by a group of young people, was nominated to the festival, held between May 23–29 at Niepokalanow, Warsaw. There were 142 films and TV programmes from 21 countries selected for the festival. Asia is represented by India, Indonesia and Thailand. Other entries include films from Australia, Canada, France, Italy and USA.

“The demands of ever new film production technologies have compelled us to take into consideration the web–film category,” said Mr. Zygmunt Gutowski, the director of the Niepokalanow festival and president of the Catholic Film Association in Poland (Signis member).

“We are happy to note that a brilliant film produced in Kolkata by a group of young people with a shoestring budget and available on the Internet was nominated to the final screening of the festival. Maybe, in the next year we’ll have to introduce the new ‘web film category’ to our festival,” he added.

“This is the third consecutive year that films from India have been nominated to the Niepokalanow festival. In 2003, ‘Mathia’ from Tripura won the Best Feature Film Award. ‘My Karma’ from Kolkata won the short feature film award in 2004. This year’s nomination is entitled: ‘The Cashbook’,” said Salesian Father C. M. Paul, former president of Signis–India – National Catholic Association for Radio, TV and Cinema.