Children of Taliban premieres at FiLums

This year's festival has a selection of 130 films and several workshops.

LAHORE: This year’s annual International LUMS Film Festival (FiLums) not only has a selection of 130 short, feature-length and animated films and documentaries but also several workshops.

The workshops that will be conducted by veterans like Shaan, Syed Noor, Reema Khan, Moammar Rana – in addition to members of the Lums Media Arts (LMA) and the society patron Dr Ali Khan – aim to help prospective and aspiring directors, actors, screenplay writers and editors.

The first day’s highlight was the screening of Children of Taliban, a documentary by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, an Emmy award winner. Usman and Sameena Peerzada and Farhad Humayun were among those who attended the screening.

The jury for the three-day event that kicked off on Friday has an impressive list of names.

Short films will be judged by Mian Adnan Ahmad (Film maker), Adil Sher (Film maker), Nasir Khan (Film maker), Bilal Lashari (Director), Tipu Sharif (Film maker) and Mohib Mirza (Film maker); documentaries by Samar Minallah, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Film maker), Adeel Hashmi (director) and Fasi Zaka (columnist); animated movies by Syed Ali Hassan (animator), Mohummad Zohaib (animator), Syed Arif Hassan (film maker) and Ahsan Amir Moosa (director); and feature length films will be judged by Syed Noor (director), Reema Khan (actor), Moammar Rana (actor), Javed Sheikh (actor) and Seemi Raheel (actor).

Some of the participants, however, were not happy with the panel of judges for feature-length films, Rizwan Khan (a participant from the King Edward Medical University) said, “I don’t intend to criticise the film industry but the panel of judges is filled with people who have a different idea about films. Their work is not something that could be a part of this event.”

Sundus Naeem (LMA president) responded to the objection with “The judges are veterans of our film industry. Our aim is to revive Pakistani cinema so every aspect of our film industry is important.”

FiLums will be presenting awards to best actor, best director, best story, best screenplay, best short film, best documentary, best animation and best feature length film on the third day. Film entries would be screened all day from 9 am to 7pm.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2011.