The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) is organizing a 4-day long film festival from April 14-18, 2004 at ArcLight Cinemas, an elegant, state-of-the-art facility at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood. IFFLA will showcase a combination of approximately 35 features, shorts and documentaries.

The festival opens with the stunning period drama 'Chokher Bali', based on Rabindranath Tagore's novel, starring Aishwarya Rai. Other entries in the popular category are 'Anaahat', 'Maqbool', 'Malli' and 'Halo'. Kamal Hassan's recent Tamil venture 'Virumandi' also finds a place among The greats from Indian cinema. The festival closes with 'Hazaaron Khwahishen Aise', which is almost a deeply personal view of India during the emergency period in 1975.

The biggest draw of the film festival is the Santosh Sivan's 'Terrorist' and Maniratnam's 'Kannathil Muthamittal'(which was a big flop in Telugu).

For Telugu cinema, it is a matter of great shame that one of the biggest film industries in India has not one good film to its credit to show for the elite audience of the festival. The producers may claim that the films in Telugu are made with commercial interests in mind. But if you look at the films lined up for the festival which include 2 commercial films from Tamil, almost half a dozen of them from Hindi.

The Telugu industry continues to churn out insipid movies which neither kindle the creative mind nor satisfy the aesthetic taste of the audience and yet they are hits, atleast that's what they claim them to be. For this industry which has talented directors in Krishna Vamsi, Teja and a
number of proteges who have worked with Ram Gopal Varma, it is ridiculous that not one film that is being made matches international standards.

Vamshi's and Teja's, Are you listening?