Prakash Raj once said “Chennai is the Kasi of Cinema”. Seldom could one have agreed with him more. The recent spurt of Film Festivals is testimony to his. The fall - winter season happens to be the season for Film Festivals in Chennai and it is not surprising considering the overwhelming response these festivals have received.

The last month alone, Chennai was flooded with Films from every corner of the world, starting with the Polish Film Festival to the recently held Disability Film festival, a first of its kind in the country. There was one every weekend. What has surprised even the guest, the likes of Govind Nihalani, Nafisa Ali, Dev Benegal, Prakash Raj, Ravi K Chandran and Salil Choudhry who came down to inaugurate the India International Disability Film Festival was the overwhelming response these festivals received. The festival stood out amongst the others in more ways, one was that arrangements were made for people with disabilities to experience the movies and the other was a open competition “60 seconds to Fame”, a one minute film on disability, the jury was shocked by the number of entries they received, 208 of them from which they had to pick 3 winners. This is what director Govind Nihalani, jury head had to say on the entries - “every one of them had looked at the subject with imagination and seriousness with the limited resources available to them. I think they produced huge variety of view-points.” Many of the Guests opined that most mainstream movies tend to either empathize with the disabled or mock at them, seldom do we have films that show life in their perspective.

This trend of film festivals is not new to Chennai. In the early seventies, it is said that most directors used to draw ‘inspiration’ from the movies screened. Though such things seldom happen these days, probably directors now prefer watching DVDs to get inspired. In fact the Chennai International Film Festival which has become an Annual Event is eliciting good response every year.

Film Festivals have of late played a critical role in elevating the audience’s appreciation levels, a trend that was obvious with the number of run-of-the-mill movies biting the dust. Let us hope these film festivals just don’t stop with enlightening the audience but filmmakers as well .