English Entertainment
Two internationally renowned Indian films get country premiere at MAMI
NEW DELHI: Two Indian films that made their mark in foreign film festivals saw their Indian premiere at the ongoing 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival: The Song Of Scorpions by the renowned Anup Singh and Village Rockstars by director Rima Das.
While The Song Of Scorpions premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival 2017, Village Rockstars was the only Indian film to be selected for the competition category, Discovery, at theToronto International Film Festival 2017.
Singh, whose film Qissa – The Tale of a lonely Ghost has already won several awards globally, says his film The Song Of Scorpions was prompted by the tragic incident of the Nirbhaya gang rape in Delhi in 2012.
He also added that the character of Nooran was inspired by his observation of watching a certain section of women singers in rural Rajasthan. These are singers that sing compositions based on the birth of a child and other such rituals but are not allowed to perform in public.
Singh was responding to questions after the screening of The Song Of Scorpions starring Irrfan Khan, Golshifteh Farahani and Waheeda Rehman opened to a packed response at its Indian premiere at the 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. The film has been selected in the Spotlight Category at the festival.
The film, which had its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival 2017, is a Swiss-French-Singaporean co-production and has been produced by Saskia Vischer and Shahaf Peled for Feather Light Films, Michel Merkt for KNM in association with Thierry Lenouvel for France’s Cine Sud Promotion and Singapore based Aurora Holdings and M Capital Ventures.
Village Rockstars is the story of Dhunu, a girl who grows up in poverty and learns to fend for herself. However, that does not prevent her from following her dream of forming a rock band and owning a guitar someday.
The premiere was attended by Rima Das and the kids who have acted in the film including Das’ niece Bhanita Das who plays Dhunu. Most of the cast members of the film are non actors including Bhanita and the other kids who hail from Rima Das’ native village in Assam.
This is the first premiere that the cast of the film has ever attended. It is also the first time that they had travelled out of their hometown. And it was a dream come true for them as they watched themselves on screen including Dhunu who also admitted that she wants to become an actress.
Also present at the premiere was Pan Nalin, director of the TIFF 2015 People’s Choice Award winner Angry Indian Goddesses.
Village Rockstars has also been nominated for Oxfam Best Film on Gender Equality Award 2017 at the 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.The film was an official selection at Film Bazaar Recommends (at NFDC Film Bazaar 2016), 2017 Marche du Film (Cannes) Work-In-Progress, San Sebastian International Film Festival 2017 and 2oth International Children’s Film Festival. It is also the closing film at the 2017 Dharamshala International Film Festival.
The Song of Scorpions is Singh’s third feature film is a story of twisted love, revenge and the redemptive power of a song. Nooran (Golshifteh Farahani), carefree and defiantly independent, is a tribal woman learning the ancient art of healing from her grandmother, a revered scorpion-singer. When Aadam (Khan), a camel trader in the Rajasthan desert, hears her sing, he falls desperately in love. But, even before they can get to know each other better, Nooran is poisoned by a treachery that sets her on a perilous journey to avenge herself and find her song.
The Indian premiere was attended by Singh, producers Saskia Vicher and Shahaf Peled apart from the cast members of the film which included Shefali Bhushan, Sara Arjun and Kritika Pande. Besides this, actor Rasika Dugal who had starred in Singh’s Qissa – The Tale Of A Lonely Ghost had also attended the screening.
The film marks the second collaboration of Singh and Khan after the much acclaimed Qissa and also marks the comeback of legendary actress Waheeda Rehman. The Song of Scorpions was also an official selection at the 2017 BFI London Film Festival.
It is also the second feature film of Singh that has been chosen as an Official Selection at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. Qissa had won the award for the Second Best Film in the India Gold competition category in the 2013 edition of the festival.
The Indian premiere also coincided with the 70th year of the Swiss-Indian Treaty of Friendship and was attended by Martin J. Beinz, the Consul General of Switzerland in Mumbai.
Talking about the lead actors, the director mentioned how Golshifteh Farahani’s recounting of her experiences of her life in Iran and post her exile from Iran convinced him that she was the perfect choice for the character of Nooran. Similarly, Khan’s ability to depict the good and bad side of a person with the right balance gave Singh the confidence to cast Khan for the role of Aadam.
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
