Outstanding film personalities spotted as festival jurors

K.S. Sivakumaran

At last year's international film festival in Goa, I spotted a few global figures in the cinema world serving as jurors. One among them was Tabu whom I have seen her acting in a few Hindi and Thamil films. Let's take some facts about her.

She hails from Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. I have a feeling her mother tongue is Urdu and she is conversant in Hindi, Telugu and English judging from her roles in Telugu, Thamil and Malayalam and even in English. She is reaching 40 and still very attractive.

The strange thing about her is that she is a serious actress and at the same time she glitters in glamorous or commercial films. She has won twice the Best Actress National Film Award of India. I saw her at close quarters.

Cineastes would know that India born Meera Nair hit the world cinema headlines with her kind of exotic films.

And one of Nair's films was 'The Namesake' . Acting in the film made Tabu internationally known because it was a film made in America.

We were told that some of her best films had been 'The Namesake', Maqbool, 'Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities' and Maachis - I am yet to see these films.

In the last named film she had played the role (we learnt) of a Punjabi woman caught in the rise of Sikh insurgency in India. We also learned that in 1985 she had acted as the daughter of Dev Anand in a film called Hum Naujawa. In Telugu films called 'Coolie No.1' and Ninne Pelladtha Tabu was featured- again a miss for me. We have no chance to see Telugu films in Lanka.

Her other Hindi films were: Sagan Chale Sasural, Jeet, Border, Biwi No 1, Hum Saath-Saath Hain, Hera Pheri, Astitva and Chandni Bar. I had seen some of these films on TV Channels.

Sizzling Tabu brought aesthetic delight in her Thamil film like Kandukondaen Kandukondaen, Kaathal Desam and few other films that I enjoyed.

Another celebrity as a juror was Niki Krimi born in 1971. She is not only an actress in Iranian Cinema but also a filmmaker and writer. She is a voracious reader of Persian and World literature we are told. She has translated into Persian a biography on the great 'method school' actor Marlon Brando. Although she looked highbrow and elitist in person, (I must also add appearances can be deceptive) yet she has acted in 20 Iranian films and directed two feature films.

Besides the two women there were three males in the jury.

They were: Peter Ho-Sun Chan from Hong Kong, Marco Mueller from Italy and Lav Diaz from the Philippines. While Mueller is a Sinologist and anthropologist turned film critic, Chan is a filmmaker and producer and Diaz is reckoned as one of the important directors in Asian Cinema, I couldn't gather much information on these three personalities. Cinema is indeed a magic formula to purge our emotions- catharsis they say. sivakumaranksyahoo.com