Pamjim (Goa), December 2
The previous two days were days of Italy in the 36th International Film Festival of India here with a series of events highlighting the welcome trend of the Indo-Italian audiovisual co-production agreement signed in May this year.

There was a workshop in the Film Bazar to highlight the advantages of the treaty. Among the speakers were Italian Ambassador Antonio Armellini, producer of Italian film “Fire At My Heart” Lamberto Lambertini, Indian film producer Bobby Bedi and Sunit Tandon of the NFDC.

The main female role in “Fire At My Heart” has been played by Indian actress Sonali Kulkarni. It is based on a true story set in 1815 during the final days of Joachim Murat’s brief rule as the King of Naples.

Wounded soldier Eugenio is returning home to Naples from the battlefields of France. He feels an existential restlessness that war cannot assuage.

Eugenio is in love with a peasant beauty Graziella (Sonali Kulkarni), whom he meets on an island after being rescued from a seastorm.

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Friday was celebrated as French Day with the screening of “Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra”, a film based on the cartoon characters of Asterix and Obelix.

The previous night, the Anglo-French production “Man to Man” was screened in the presence of its Oscar-winning director Regis Wargnier.

The English language film set in the 1870s has Jamie Dodd, a Scottish anthropologist returning to Scotland from his Afrrican trip with his two kidnapped pygmies. He is the only one who treats them as human beings, while for others they are only savages.

It is a gripping tale of atrocities heaped on people of the Third World by so-called civilised Europeans.

Rekha visited IFFI yesterday with her sister Dr Kamala Selvaraj for the retrospective on her father Gemini Ganeshan.

Dressed in a pink and gold sari, she exuded charm and drew delirious crowds.

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Whenever traffic on the riverfront road connecting the two venues of the IFFI screening , Kala Academy and INOX theatre, is blocked, which is fairly often, arrangements are made to ferry delegates from one to another by autorickshaws. This year, motorcyclists have also been pressed into service who ferry around single delegates.

These young men with yellow bikes do their job with an infectious smile and that does more for Goan tourism than all officials handouts.

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One riveting film in the festival is “Looking for Angelina” by Canadian director Sergio Navarretta. It won the Best Feature Drama award and the Quintus Award of Distinction at the recent Quintus Montreal Italian Festival.

It is based on the true story of Angelina Napolitano, whose murder conviction in Sault Ste. Marie caused worldwide uproar in the early 1900s.

In 1911, Angelina Napolitano, a 28-year-old mother of four, killed her abusive husband Pietro Napolitano. After a three-hour trial, Angelina was sentenced to death. The story was picked up by an American reporter and soon signatures of thousands of petitioners from around the world arrived at the office of Canada’s Justice Minister demanding her release.

The film focuses on the global media frenzy surrounding the events of the trial and the discrimination involved in it.