A festival that stays in the capital: the thirty-first IFFK and the academy behind it

Background

The International Film Festival of Kerala, known as IFFK, is the State's international film festival, and work on its thirty-first edition has begun with the formation of the reception committee. The Minister for Cinema, Culture and Tourism, who inaugurated that meeting, said the festival will continue to be held at Thiruvananthapuram. The first show of each day is to begin at seven in the morning, and screenings will also run late into the night, so that people are not left waiting in long queues without getting in. The chairman and the vice chairperson of the Chalachitra Academy took part in the meeting, along with the chairman of the Lalithakala Akademi, the chairman of the Cultural Welfare Fund Board and the Director of the Culture department. Cultural programmes are planned on Manaveeyam Veethi, and ritual art forms are to be presented at Kanakakkunnu over six days by the Culture and Tourism departments together. Every academy under the Culture department is to hold its own programmes alongside the festival. The Tourism department has drawn up a plan to take visitors from abroad to the main tourist centres of the State. What marks the festival out, the Minister said, is that ordinary film lovers come to it along with film-makers.