New film society to screen world cinema every week

The founder of last year’s Ahmedabad International Film Festival,Shiladitya Bora,is behind this new society— Sunset Boulevard.

“We sold 4,284 tickets at the rate of Rs 200 and a lot of season tickets that were priced at Rs 2,200. That’s when we realised this city has a great potential and decided to start something like this,” Bora said.

However,he added that the society,which will function wholly on membership,is “for a very particular kind of audience”.

The first screening will be held on April 15 of Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi’s feature film The Songs of Sparrow.

Besides the unique genre base,the society would host one filmmaker every month to talk to members about his or her filmmaking.

The first filmmaker to attend the screening and talk about his work would be Bengali filmmaker Anirudha Roy Chowdhury,whose film Antaheen was judged the Best Film at the National Awards last year.

Members would also be issued a transferable smart card with validity of one month to a year.

Cinema experts will also be occasionally invited to talk about aesthetics,which would “create a new window towards creating a sense of good cinema,” a release at the launch said.

The organisers plan to expand the society to cities like Kolkata,Guwahati,Pune,Delhi,Baroda and Surat.

The April 15 screening will be held simultaneously at Gandhinagar,Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.

The society also has a website — http://www.sunsetboulevard.in — where it lists schedules of screenings and membership details.