West Bengal govt to honour top Bengali actresses in Bollywood

Kolkata: Five Bollywood actresses of Bengali origin - Moushumi Chatterjee, Sushmita Sen, Rani Mukherjee, Bipasha Basu, Konkona Sen Sharma would be felicitated by the West Bengal government at the closing ceremony of the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF).

"The idea is to award 'Panch Kanya' (Five Women) from Bengal who have done well at the national level in Bollywood," KIFF director Jadav Mondal told reporters here today.

The organisers of the state government-run festival have already got confirmation from Moushumi, Sushmita and Bipasha on their attending the gala event to be held on November 17 at the Science City auditorium here.

"We are hopeful that Rani and Konkona will also soon confirm their presence," Mondal said.

The inaugural session of the 19th edition of KIFF would be held at the Netaji Indoor Stadium in the presence of Bollywood biggies like Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan, Mithun Chakraborty and Shahrukh Khan.

Among others, Bollywood actress Sharmila Tagore and directors Madhur Bhandarkar and Shoojit Sarkar would also be present at later stage of the festival on November 14. Late maverick filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh's unreleased film 'Taak Jhaank' (Sunglass) would be screened for the first time and would be the inaugural film.

To pay tribute to the director who passed away few months ago, eight of his films including Unishe April, Dahan, The Last Lear and Chitrangada would also be screened at the KIFF. With 13 venues including the Nandan-Rabindra Sadan complex, Inox City Centre 1 and Star Theatre, altogether 189 films would be shown in the eight-day-long film carnival.

Adding an international touch to KIFF would be 24 delegates from abroad led by Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai who will also hold a masterclass for film students.

The organisers also launched a mobile application which would give all the information related to screenings of films during the festival.

The focus this year would be on Southeast Asian films. A new addition to this year's KIFF is the section 'Shades of Black and White' where contemporary black and white films would be shown.