The last Indian film to compete for the main prize at Cannes Film Festival -- Golden Palm -- was Shaji N Karun's Swaham in 1994
Interestingly, the director’s Piravi (1988) was also the most screened Indian film in the fest circuit -- until very recently. Shivendra Dungarpur’s documentary Celluloid Man has overtaken the classic in this regard.u00a0
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Shivendra Dungarpur with Laura Finney at the recently concluded Telluride Film Festival
According to the documentary’s maker, Celluloid Man is the only Indian film to have been screened at 47 film festivals in India and abroad. “It has been curated by some of the most prestigious film festivals in the world including Telluride, New York, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Edinburgh. Not a day goes by when I don’t receive a call or a mail asking for the film to be screened in some corner of the world, as diverse as Kolhapur or Madurai or the University of Sorbonne, Paris or the University of Southern California,” adds Dungarpur, adding that it got showcased at Vladivostok (Russia) yesterday.
Much of the credit goes to the subject the documentary tackles: the legendary film archivist PK Nair, based in Kerala. “He led an extraordinary life as an archivist and is finally being recognised for his work the world over. The awareness is spreading that we need to preserve and restore our cinematic heritage,” sums up the filmmaker.
Out and about
Some of the film festivals where the celebrated documentary was exhibited: New York, Hague, Dublin, Oslo, Atlanta, Bologna, MAMI, Shanghai, Seattle, Los Angeles, Hong Kon, Gothenburg, San Francisco, Colombo, Scarborough, Kathmandu, Suva…u00a0
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