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A record 63 countries have entered the race for Oscars glory in next year’s Best Foreign Language Film category, officials said Wednesday.
   Academy Awards organisers announced the list of entries for the coveted prize roughly three months ahead of the formal announcement of nominations for other main categories at next year’s 80th Oscars.
   The 63 entries will eventually be whittled down to five nominees who will all jostle for the most famous statuette in show business at the 2008 Academy Awards, which take place in Hollywood on February 24.
   The two debutants in the competition are entries from Azerbaijan and Ireland, the Academy said in a statement.
   Romania’s entry, ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,’ is likely to be one of the early front-runners in the Oscar race.
   Filmmaker Cristian Mungiu scooped the prestigious Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his film, a wrenching story about a girl’s back-alley abortion in communist-era Romania.
   Other notable entries included Portugal’s ‘Belle Toujours,’ the latest offering from Manoel de Oliveira, who at age 98 is believed to be the world’s oldest working director.
   Another veteran, Poland’s Andrzej Wajda, has been entered for ‘Katyn,’ a harrowing film about the massacre of civilians by Soviet troops in 1940. Wajda, 81, received an honorary Oscar in 2000.
   Several directors who have already scored Oscar wins in the category are amongst the contenders.
   They include Italy’s Giuseppe Tornatore, whose beloved ‘Cinema Paradiso’ triumphed in 1990. Tornatore is entered for ‘The Unknown.’
   Another former winner is Canada’s Denys Arcand, whose ‘The Barbarian Invasions’ won the 2004 Oscar. This time, Arcand is entered for ‘Days of Darkness.’

Indra Mohan Rajbangshi received the Certificate of World Master at the International Festival of World Masters in Art and Culture, held in Seoul, South Korea recently.
   A total of 51 countries participated at the festival divided into two categories –– performance and exhibition.
   President of the Association of World Masters for the Exchange of Art and Culture, Kim Sung Oak, distributed the certificates among the participants, said a press release.

National award winning artists Gulshan Hossain has won a partial scholarship from the University of Southampton, a leading university of the United Kingdom, for her masters in Fine Arts. Gulshan obtained highest GPA in Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from the University of Development Alternatives.