
Now, small towns get a taste of world and regional cinema
Namrata Joshi
Small Town Cinema
Haryana International Film Festival, organised by journalist Ajit Rai in association with DAV College for Girls, Yamunanagar, held for the third year running. Similar festivals planned in 10 other Haryana towns.
After the success of its Cinema of Resistance festival in Gorakhpur in 2006, Jan Sanskriti Manch has organised five film festivals in Gorakhpur, one in Bareilly, one in Allahabad, two in Bhilai, one in Nainital, besides three in Lucknow and another in Patna. Plans to have festivals in Ara, Bhojpur, Azamgarh, Gonda, Ashoknagar, Jabalpur, Patiala, Chandigarh, Udaipur, Pithoragarh, Almora, Dehradun, Srinagar (Uttarakhand).
Dainik Jagran group’s Jagran film festival held in Kanpur, Allahabad, Benares, Agra, Meerut, Dehradun, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Patna, Ranchi and Jamshedpur
International film fests organised in Jaipur and Ahmedabad
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“We have never seen such realistic, song-less films before,” says Radhika Sharma, a wide-eyed mass communications student from Doaba College, Jalandhar. The word ‘never’, in fact, pops up again and again in our chats with college students from Jalandhar, Kurukshetra, Sonepat, Khanpur…