Panaji : Superstar Rajinikanth will be conferred with the Centenary Award for Indian Film Personality of the Year during the ten-day International Film Festival of India starting in Goa on 20th November.
The 45th International Film Festival of India will be a star-studded affair with two of Indian cinema’s biggest superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Rajinikanth sharing the stage at the opening ceremony as Bachchan, 72, will attend the festival as chief guest.
Apart from Bachchan and Rajinikanth, celebrated Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai will be honoured with the lifetime achievement award at the 11-day festival with his latest project ‘The Grandmaster’ being the closing film.
The focus country for this year’s festival is China with India being keen on tapping the “vast” Chinese entertainment market for its films.
“Quality of Chinese films is better than those of Hollywood. China has vast market. There are about 50,000 cinema halls in China while in India we have five to 10,000 cinema halls. We already have a cooperation treaty with China. India will gain from Chinese market, if we make films together,” Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who made minister of state for the information and broadcasting in the cabinet reshuffle, told reporters.
A working group from China, comprising those from film industry of the country, will participate in the festival during which they will also have interaction with the Indian filmmakers to explore how the two countries can collaborate to produce films together. “We hope to collaborate on films and release our movies in the Chinese market,” he said.
A special tribute has been planned for stars including Richard Attenborough, Robbie Williams, Zohra Sehgal, Suchitra Sen, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Farookh Sheikh and A K Nageswara. The festival has also a special retrospective on this year’s Dada Saheb Phalke winner Gulzar.
