A film festival is born: Story of IFFI’s origins 67 years ago | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

A film festival is born: Story of IFFI’s origins 67 years ago | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Atikh Rashid |Updated: November 24, 2019 11:06:45 pm

A film festival is born: Story of IFFI’s origins 67 years ago

The first IFFI was organised by Films Division with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's "blessings", at a paltry budget of Rs 1 lakh.

Then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with Indian and foreign film personalities after inaugurating the Delhi leg of the first international film festival held in January-February 1952. (credit: National Film Archive of India)

The International Film Festival of India was born in Bombay in January 1952 but it was conceived six months prior in the Kashmir valley. The idea of organising such a festival of motion pictures, which would be a first for the East, was proposed to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru by Films Division’s then Chief Producer Mohan Bhavnani when he was visiting Srinagar for a political event. Bhavnani, a filmmaker trained in Germany who had made several silent films after his return to India and was appointed to head the Films Division after it was established in 1948, had recently returned from a visit to Paris where he had attended a meeting of Film Experts Committee of UNESCO and was toying with the idea to hold India’s own film festival.