• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• Business Line
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Our Bureau

While film buffs in the West were familiar with names such asSatyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, there was a demand for Bengali commercial films, besides what the parallel movies, among the NRI Bengalis.

Kolkata , March 2

IN a bid to bring mainstream Bengali cinema to the international arena Kala, Music and Play Inc (KMP), a California-based event management company, has decided to institute awards for Bengali films made in West Bengal as well as Dhaka.

Mr Debu Ghosh, Chairman and CEO of KMP, told Business Line that for the first time an award ceremony would be held in Manhattan Centre in New York which would also be broadcast live by ATN Bangla. The awards would be announced on April 17. The nominations were announced here.

"Although Bengali is the seventh most-spoken language in the world, commercial Bengali film has never been taken abroad. With improved quality of these films the time was right to market these films internationally," he told Business Line just before leaving for the US.

He said that while film buffs in the West were familiar with names such asSatyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, there was a demand for Bengali commercial films, besides what the parallel movies, among the NRI Bengalis.

Good sub-titling would ensure an even larger audience, he felt.

"Through this award, KMP is hopeful of feeding the market for Bengali films as has been done for South Indian films and Hindi films - Bollywood depends on its overseas earnings for the commercial success of many of its films," Mr Ghosh remarked.

He said that KMP was a cultural entertainment programme production company, which has been responsible for organising many shows abroad involving Mumbai artistes.

"So far, we have organised 300 shows in Europe, North America and Bangladesh," he said. The company specialises in event management, brand promotion and media services.

Mr Ghosh said that commercial films from West Bengal as well as Dhaka were eligible for the awards with two sets of jury doing the selections. There were also categories for lifetime achievement awards in the name of Satyajit Ray for best direction, Hemanta Mukherjee for music and Uttam Kumar for acting.

For this year's awards Aishwarya Rai's Chokher Bali and `Abar Arannye' (a sequel to a Ray movie) has received nominations in the Best Parallel movie category.

More Stories on : Cinema | Entertainment & Leisure | Other States

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Time for departure

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line