In February 2016, the first-ever London Bengali Film Festival (LBFF) is expected to be held in the UK. This is the first time an international film festival will be focusing on Bengali films, and is currently accepting submissions from all over the world. LBFF will be accepting applications till December 15.
The three-day festival will be held in London with special guests and talks, followed by a red carpet awards ceremony on the fourth day.
Munsur Ali, founder and chief executive officer of LBFF, was in Dhaka recently, and we caught up with him.
Tell us a bit about yourself. How and why did you get into filmmaking?
I got into filmmaking about 16 years ago. During my late teens, I was watching films from Hollywood, Bollywood and other film industries, and I found that a lot of the films that we see don’t really give us the correct perception of what may seem as the truth. That’s not a big issue on the surface, but if films become one of the most important sources of information, of sharing our idealogies and values, then it’s quite worrying that people who have access to filmmaking are showing only one point of view.
So, it was quite simple. I thought, what do I do about it? Rather than sit and whine about it, I wanted to do something about this perception of history and the truth.
How and why did you get LBFF started?
For the last eight years, I’ve been running the Limelight Film Awards, a successful programme attended by 500 filmmakers, media personalities, celebrities, and Hollywood stars. It’s really grown so much that I now have a fantastic network of partners, sponsors, colleagues in different media.
I started the LBFF to promote and export Bengali films from West Bengal and Bangladesh to the UK audience.
How has the response been so far?
The response has been phenomenal. We opened up for submissions on September 6, and film interests from Bangladesh and West Bengal were numerous, and I’ve heard from an Australian filmmaker as well as from someone in Berlin, Germany.
This shows that there’s a lot of Bengali-based film talent throughout the world.
What are your hopes from the festival?
As it seems that there’s a lot of film talent here as well as in West Bengal. But now we’re seeing that there’s more in Australia and Europe – that’s really cool because it’s strengthening the network. And filmmakers usually feel quite isolated. The usual struggle of a filmmaker is that he thinks he is alone, and I believe something like this will bring them together.
