Exclusive Odia Film Festival Coming Up In June At Bhubaneswar; Block Your Dates

Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Film Festival (BFF) will be organising a three-day exclusive festival of Odia films at Jaydev Bhawan and Gita Gobinda Sadan here from June 7 to 9.

BFF chose April 28 to make the announcement as it was on this date in 1936 that Odisha became a film-making province with ‘Sita Bibaha’, 27 days after becoming the first state to be carved out on linguistic basis in British India.

The Odia film festival will be inaugurated on June 7 evening at Jaydev Bhawan.

Eminent film personalities from Odisha and Mumbai are expected to grace the festival.

Subash Sahoo, co-convenor of the festival and an ace sound designer of Mumbai, said such an event has been missing from the landscape of Odia cinema for over two decades.

“The idea is to gather a host of film personalities to interact, craft ideas and possibilities for the industry, enable a wider audience to watch old classics while encouraging award-winning films which couldn’t be released in movie halls,” said Sahoo.

“We expect that the festival will be a great opportunity for students of cinema who can glean creative insights from engagements with directors, screenwriters, archivists and scribes present for the event. At a time when Odia cinema is slowly reviving from a slumber, a festival like this is a humble effort to bring back Odia film lovers back to cinema and relive its past cinematic glories and excellence,” Sahoo hoped.