By Ashraf Padanna/Gulf Times Correspondent/Thiruvananthapuram
The International Film Festival of Kerala, one of India’s premier film festivals, is all set to get Unesco’s sponsorship.
A Unesco team is expected to assess the 20th edition of the IFFK which concluded on Friday here, and which was attended by 14,000 delegates from across the state.
The move comes after Congress MP from the state capital Shashi Tharoor initiated talks with his former colleague and Unesco chief Irina Bokova.
IFFK director Shaji N Karun said the Unesco tag will help it position itself as one of the major film festivals providing a platform for Afro-Asian-Latin American movies.
The IFFK directorate also plans to collaborate with Dubai and Singapore film festivals to make available outstanding current releases here and mutually promote the cinema market.
A delegation from Dubai is expected here soon to meet Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Cinema Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan.
Organisers claim that the IFFK stands ahead of many international festivals like Venice, Busan, and Berlin in terms of organisation, quality of films screened and the crowd presence.
This year’s edition also benefited from the installation of eight DCI-certified Qube XPI Digital Cinema servers, improving viewer experience.
Real Image Media Technologies (RIMT), the IFFK’s technical partner, also performed quality checks before the screenings and ensured that the films played in correct video and audio formats with subtitles.
RIMT also managed digital licence keys.
An RIMT team of 20 engineers along with project co-ordinators were working round-the-clock to ensure screenings took place as scheduled and that quality was at a premium.
Qube Cinema, a key player in film and broadcast technology in India for nearly 30 years, worked to create seamless digital cinema environments for exhibitors, filmmakers and postproduction companies with technologies that are innovative, flexible and cost-effective.
There were at least 180 films from 64 countries at the festival at 13 venues across the city.
Some of the delegates of the film festival pose in front of one of the venues of the event in Thiruvananthapuram.
