The 14th Mumbai Film Festival will pay a special tribute to Bollywood’s first superstar Rajesh Khanna with a special screening of the actor’s first superhit film Aradhana, it was announced on Monday. The festival will also screen films from actors A.K. Hangal and Dara Singh who passed away earlier this year.
“This is our tributes to the three great actors of Indian cinema, who are no longer with us,” said festival director Srinivasan Narayanan.
Starting from October 18, the eight-day festival will be screening around 200 films from 65 countries around the world, with a special focus on the cinematic history of Italy and France.
“We are going to screen around 30 films from Italy, many of who are going to be rare restored films from the Italian silent era,” Narayanan said.
The festival will also screen a special package of restored Indian silent films such as Kaliya Mardan, Raja Harishchandra, Marthan Varma and Sati Savitri among others accompanied by a live orchestra to mark the 100 years of Indian cinema. “These films have been restored after lot of effort and will offer an experience like never before to film lovers,” he added.
The festival will confer the Lifetime Achievement Award to noted Waheeda Rehman, who has worked in films like Kaagaz Ke Phool, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam and Guide among others.
With an aim to promote independent directors, the festival will screen films participating at various at competitions offering a prize money of $2.2 lakhs. The jury for the various film competitions will see many noted names from world cinema including Star Wars director Gary Kurtz, cinematographer Declan Quinn, Korean filmmaker Im Sang-soo (Taste of Money) and Brazillian director Sergio Machado along with Indian names like Reema Kagti, Sanjay Suri and Umesh Kulkarni.
“A major focus of the festival is to attract people associated with the business of filmmaking bring together film makers and location and service providers together on the same platform,” added Narayanan. The final list of the participating films be announced in the coming few days.