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The 28th National Rabindrasangeet conference will begin on Friday at the Central Public Library in Dhaka.
   The National Rabindrasangeet Sammilan Parishad will hold the conference with the slogan ‘Hingsaay ummatta prithhi’.
   ‘On the concluding day, we will honour noted artiste Pabitra Mohan Dey of Mymensingh with the Rabindra Padak’, organisation secretary Bulbul Islam said at a briefing at the Dhaka reporters Unity on Wednesday. Pabitra will also receive Tk 25,000 as gift.
   Besides, more than 400 artistes from 60 districts will participate at a contest, beginning on Thursday, said the organisers, adding the competition would be divided into two groups.
   ‘All the contestants will be awarded while the Ananya award will be given to one who will be considered best among the participants’, said Bulbul.
   Sanjida Khatun is expected to inaugurate the conference at 9:30am, said the organisers, adding the conference was first held in 1982.
   They also said they would hold the conference in Dhaka and at a district headquarters every alternate year and the next year conference would be held in Jessore.
   Organisation president Professor Zillur Rahman Sidiqui, Mita Haque, Lily Islam and Lokman Halim also attended the briefing.
   ‘We have been living with so many problems. Yet, we have to keep going with cultural programmes as the nation finds it through the cultural practices’, said Zillur Rahman.
   The organisers expected 10,000 spectators each day at a three-day conference.

This year’s San Sebastian film festival, the most prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world, will feature a retrospective of the work of Richard Brooks, the director of ‘Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,’ the organisers said Tuesday.
   French movie trends over the past 10 years will also be highlighted in a retrospective entitled ‘Backwash: the cutting edge of French cinema’ at the 57th edition of the festival, to be held in the northern coastal Spanish city from September 17 to 26.
   It will feature 40 works by filmmakers such as Laurent Cantet, Bruno Dumont, Arnaud Desplechin and Jacques Audiard.
   The festival organisers described Brooks as ‘a member of the so-called ‘generation of violence’ alongside filmmakers like Samuel Fuller, Robert Aldrich, Nicholas Ray, Richard Fleischer and Don Siegel.’
   He ‘forged his own path with movies made from 1950 to 1985, despite the fact that as an author he was often denied the prestige enjoyed by his generational peers.
   ‘His films include some of the finest screen adaptations of literary works,’ such as Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood,’ Tennessee Williams’ ‘Cat On a Hot Tin Roof’, starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, and Joseph Conrad’s ‘Lord Jim.’
   The organisers have yet to announce the list of films competing for this year’s Golden Shell award, which was won in 2008 by the Turkish movie ‘Pandora’s Box’.

After high-profile protests against women in pubs and an anti-Valentine’s Day campaign, Hindu nationalists in India are taking aim at another target – the unlikely figure of Charlie Chaplin.
   Members of a right-wing party in the southern state of Karnataka have opposed the erection of a 67-feet statue of the legendary comedian for a film shoot.
   They say it is disrespectful to put up the likeness of the British star near a temple in Udupi, 250 miles from Bangalore, arguing that Chaplin was a Christian and made no contribution to India. But the move has provoked a strong backlash from fans of Chaplin, who although born into the Church of England was thought to be agnostic for most of his life.
   Local Kannada-language filmmakers and cultural figures have also waded in, countering that the statue has nothing to do with religion and that banning it would set a precedent against artistic freedom.
   Appeals to the state government have been made and an online petition set up urging people to save Chaplin from ‘these great dictators’ – a reference to his 1940 satire on Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ‘The Great Dictator.’

Academy Award-winning ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ has secured a coveted slot as one of 20 major foreign movies that China will import this year, a distributor said Wednesday.
   Many Hollywood movies miss out on the booming Chinese cinema market because of the annual quota, and others are weeded out by the censorship process. Chinese censors are wary of unflattering portrayals of the country and its people, explicit sex and violence and sensitive topics like Tibet.