2nd Int'l Women's Film Festival begins  today

"The Fair and Lovely Foundation 2ndInternational Women's Film Festival" begins in the capital today.Information Minister Hasanul Haque Inu, MP, is scheduled to inaugurate the four-day festival at the Shawkat Osman Auditorium of the Central Public Library at Shahbagh at 4 pm.

Bangladesh's legendary film actress Sarah Begum Kabori will be present at the inaugural function as the special guest.

The Women's Film Society, Bangladesh is organizing the festival with a view to introducing the Bangladeshi film-lovers, especially the women, to the tradition and culture of different countries through screening various diversified and creative local and foreign movies.

The organizers hope that the festival would encourage the Bangladeshi women in making films.

The slogan of the festival is "Film in Women's Eyes". This year's festival has been dedicated to the pioneer of Bangladesh's women renaissance Begum Rokeya Shakhawat.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Director of the festival Mehedi Hasan said as many as 70 films of 29 countries made by women filmmakers would be shown at the festival. These include full-length movies, short films, documentaries and animation films.

Mehedi said "Audience Award" would be given to five movies to be screened at the festival through the audience votes.

Apart from screening the movies, workshop and seminar on making movies
would be held in the festival. The two-day workshop would be arranged for the women on March 15 and 16, while the seminar would be organized on March 17.

Media Coordinator of the festival Moshiour Rahman said except the opening ceremony, the movies of the festival would be screened at 11am, 2pm and 5pm every day from March 15 to March 17.

"The women could watch all movies of the festival without tickets," he
said.

Moshiour also said the movie "Akash Kato Dure", made by the country's
eminent filmmaker Samia Jaman, would be shown as the inaugural film of the festival.

He said a beautiful souvenir as well as posters and stickers have been
published on the occasion of the festival.