Srinagar/Sept,2 : The ‘Management Committee’ of ‘Kashmir World Film Festival’ has postponed the festival due to the prevailing pandemic of COVID-19 across. The 7 days “5th” Edition of the festival once again, which was scheduled to start from 1st Sep. This decision was taken after taking consultation with the members of ‘Advisory Board’ of KWFF. Most probably the next Edition of KWFF, will be held in next Spring in March/April. However the final decision about the new dates for holding the ‘5th’ Edition will be taken in January next year. Kashmir World Film Festival is the first Intellectual Property of its kind and magnitude in Kashmir and since July 2017,’4′ Editions of this festival have been conducted.
The sponsors of the event plan to bring this festival in the list of top 10 film festivals of the world, to empower the Kashmiri youth and film enthusiasts with film making knowledge for success in their careers and to empower the Kashmiri business fraternity with film production based tourism business.
In previous editions held in Srinagar, the sponsors have felicitated the film celebrities like Tabu, Madhur Bhandarkar, Rajit Kapur, Raju Ji Chadha, Rahul Mitra, Saeed Mirza, Govind Nihalani, Imam Siddiqui, Preeti Sapru, Arjuman Mughal, Rahul Bhat, Imran Khan, Ved Rahi, Sateesh Kaul, Vani Tripathi, and others.
Inlast four editions the sponsors received more than 460 (Four hundred sixty) films and out of those only 136 films were screened, that included films from 15 (fifteen) countries like, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Lebanon, Nepal, Poland, Spain, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, etc. The sponsor had the distinction of having participating films from different parts of India in different languages like Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Dogri, English, Guajarati, Gurung, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kuchi, Ladakhi, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Tibetan and Urdu. Some of the Classic and Popular films screened in different editions included the films like : Do Bigha Zamin, Guide, Bajrangi Bhaijan, Dangal, Kabuliwala, Mainz Raat, Bicycle Thieves, Citizen Kane, Life is Beatiful, 12 Angrymen, Andaz, Shree 420, Beynd the clouds, Naya Daur, Parmany, Jagte Raho, and Laila Majnoon. So far 30 (Thirty) films from abroad and India have been awarded. The number of people who attended our Festival so far has been more than 15,500 (Fifteen thousand five hundred), mostly of them youth.
In addition to this, interaction with the writers/directors/actors, film making workshops, Master Classes on various aspects of films are also held, in which 672 students have participated so far. Most of these include the boys and girls from different colleges and Universities of different districts of Kashmir like, Anantnag, Baramulla, Budgam, Pulwama, and Srinagar. The Advisory Board formed for the Festival include the personalities like, Anjum Rajabali, Anubhav Sinha, Archana Kapoor, Arunaraje Patil, Ashok Kaul, Govind Nihalani, Sayyed Humayun Qaisar, Komal Nahata, Narendra Mohan, O P Sharma, Pankaj Saxena, Premendra Majumdar, Raj Bansal, Rahul Mitra, Rajit Kapur, Raju Ji Chadha, Salim Arif, Santosh Sivan, Sarvdeep Singh, Saeed Mirza and Vinod Kapoor.