News

Jj Abrams' Bad Robot and Paramount pictures pulled a fast one on movie fans everywhere, by making a secret follow-up (of sorts) to Cloverfield, and dropping a trailer that no one knew about. Come inside to check out the trailer, poster, and learn a little more about it.

If you want to know the absolutely truth...I was so excited and jittery last night when word of this first came down, that I simply couldn't write up the news. That's how much I've been anxiously awaiting another Cloverfield movie. I've been hooked on Cloverfield since the secretive marketing began before it's launch in 2008, and I immediately loved the film itself when I saw it. It's been a long time, however, and every time it seemed like a sequel was happening our hopes were dashed.

So imagine my surprise when we find out that Jj Abrams and his Bad Robot...

Still from Blood Brother

Blood Brother, Salma, Menstrual Man and Blood Relative will screen at HotDocs, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival to be held from April 25 – May 5, 2013 in Toronto.

Blood Brother and Salma will be part of the Special Presentations, Menstrual Man will be screened under the Rule Breakers and Innovators section and Blood Relative will be part of the Canadian Spectrum category.

Blood Brother, directed by Steve Hoover is a USA production about a disillusioned American tourist in India. A meet with a group of children with HIV / AIDS changes his understanding of life. The film won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for Us Documentary at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

In Kim Longinotto’s India-uk production Salma, a Muslim girl in a South-Indian village is locked up by her family for 25 years; not allowed to study and forced into a marriage. She covertly takes up composing poems on scraps of paper.

The maiden edition of the Canada South Asian Film Festival (Saff) will be inaugurated by veteran Indian actress Jaya Bachchan on October 31st, 2012. Apart from screenings of feature, documentary and animation films, there will also be a Master Class from Buddhadeb Das Gupta.

The festival will run from 31st October to 4th November, 2012 in the British Columbia cities of Vancouver, Surrey and Abbotsford and will host films from the South Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Afghanistan and India. To commemorate 100 years of Indian Cinema the festival has organised “Memories of their first Indian Film”, wherein cinephiles are invited to send in written accounts on the topic. The highlights of the festival are:

Through Her Eyes: Women in South Asian Film

South Asian Mosaic: Lives lived in South Asia

Way Beyond Bollywood: Feature films from throughout India and South Asia

Debut Views: First or second feature films

Docs Docs Docs!

Miss Lovely by Ashim Ahluwalia, in its Us premiere, will be screened at the opening of the South Asian International Film Festival (Saiff). Earlier in the year the film was screen in the Un Certain Regard in 65th Festival de Cannes.

The Centrepiece Premiere this year at Saiff would be Paanch Adhyay (Afterglow) by Pratim D Gupta. This will be the international premiere of the Bengali film. It is scheduled to screen at the 14th Mumbai International Film Festival under the New Faces in Indian Cinema section.

Valley Of Saints by Musa Syeed will be the Closing Night Premiere of the festival. The film has won the world cinema audience award at the Sundance film festival in January this year.

Recently, Saiff in association with HBO had announced the South Asian Rising Star Awards to be held on October 23rd and co hosted by American adult entertainer and Bollywood actor Sunny Leone.