DIPLOMATS and invitees were in full strength at the colorful concluding day ceremony of the 2nd Asian Film Festival in Jeddah on Thursday night. Fourteen feature films and documentaries from 13 countries were screened at the festival, organized by the Asian Consuls General Club, with Japanese Consul General Toshimitsu Ishigure, the club coordinator. The festival began on March 7 with an Indonesian feature film and documentary.
Folk dances performed by International Indian School-Jeddah’s students followed by the award-winning and much-acclaimed “Taare Zameen Par” (Stars on the Ground), produced and directed by Aamir Khan, provided a fitting finale to the festival, which was attended on all days by a capacity crowd of invitees at the Indonesian Consulate’s auditorium. Indonesian Consul General Gatot Abdullah Mansyur allowed the use of the auditorium for the second successive year, a gesture lauded by diplomats who presented their movies each day.
Introducing the 160-minute “Taare Zameen Par,” Indian Consul General Sayeed Ahmed Baba said the movie sent a strong message to parents and teachers on how each child was different from the other and how they should be dealt with differently. “This is a movie from Bollywood; India’s movie industry is acknowledged as the world’s biggest, producing more than 1,000 feature films a year,” the consul general said. He also praised the Japanese and Indonesian consuls general for staging the event.
“Taare Zameen Par” is the story of eight-year-old Ishaan Awasthi, played by Darsheel Safary, whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate. The schoolboy is fascinated by colors, fish, dogs and kites which are unimportant in the world of adults who are much more interested in things like home studies, scores and tidiness. Ishaan just cannot get anything right in class. When he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, he is packed off to a residential school to be “disciplined.” Things are no different at his new school and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family.
One day, a new art teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan) bursts onto the scene. He infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all rules of how things are done by asking pupils to think, dream and imagine. All children, except Ishaan, respond with enthusiasm. Nikumbh soon realizes that Ishaan is unhappy, and he sets out to discover why. With time, patience and care, he ultimately helps Ishaan find himself. Safary won many accolades for his acting in this Hindi movie, which was released in India and many parts of the world in 2007.
