‘Champaran Mutton’ Film Symbolizes The New Identity of Bihar
Indian short film ‘Champaran Mutton’, which made it to the semi-finals on the prestigious platform of Student Oscar, is a symbol of the traditions of Bihar as well as the culture and consciousness of the new Bihar. This was said in a special screening of this short film jointly organized by Bihar Foundation and New Delhi Film Foundation.
This 24-minute film had made it to the last 16 films selected out of 2500 films from across the world and now it has also been shortlisted in the International Student Film Festival to be held in Beijing next month. Through the success of this film, Champaran city of Bihar, a new popular dish Champaran Mutton and the importance of short films have come into limelight.
Bihar Foundation played a major role in organizing this event, held at the grand and beautiful Bihar Sadan, Dwarka in the capital, which is a body of Bihar government dedicated to connecting the people of Bihar spread across the world, their better branding and providing better business opportunities. The CEO of Bihar Foundation and Resident Commissioner cum Investment Commissioner of Bihar, Kundan Kumar said on this occasion that today Brand Bihar is establishing a new identity and Cinema too is proving to be a powerful medium for this.
Many bureaucrats from Bihar cadre and from Bihar connection and people from media fraternity and business sector also participated in this event. Special presence was that of the former Chief Secretary of Bihar and current State Chief Information Commissioner Tripurari Sharan, who has also worked as the director of the Film and Television Institute of India and director general of Doordarshan.
The film’s director Ranjan Kumar and actress Falak Khan also came from Mumbai to attend this special and private screening of the film. The lead actor of the film is Panchayat web series Chanda Roy who could not make it despite his wishes, due to being busy with shooting of Panchayat season-3. All these three artists are from Bihar.
‘Champaran Mutton’ is a diploma film, produced by the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. After the screening of the film, an interaction was also held on the making of this film and role of cinema in building Brand Bihar, which was moderated by Ashish Kumar Singh, founder of New Delhi Film Foundation. While Ranjan Kumar told the story behind the making of the film Champaran Mutton and the craze for mutton in Champaran, Falak Khan, who hails from Muzaffarpur, told how much of a journey she had to make from Bihar to Mumbai as an actress, was challenging.
Ashish K Singh while throwing light on the Bihar’s contribution to Hindi cinema from Bhikhari Thakur’s Bidesiya to lyricist Shailendra, Bihari Babu Shatrughan Sinha, director Prakash Jha and also the new age actors like Manoj Bajpayee, late Sushant Singh Rajput and Pankaj Tripathi, said that Bihar has established a strong and completely different identity in the film industry.
This screening was a part of New Delhi Film Foundation’s ‘Cinema of India’ campaign, an initiative to bring closer to the audience such films which are good, serious, but not mainstream commercial cinema; which are not discussed as much due to dominance of mainstream commercial cinema.
Under this campaign, cooperation, support and better opportunities will also be provided to filmmakers who have a serious approach towards cinema. A poster of ‘Cinema of India’ was also released on this occasion.
During the program, information about Bihar Government’s Global Business Connect and Investment Meet to be held next month was also given and video presentations related to it were shown. Bihar Sadan is a new building of Bihar Government built in Dwarka, which is considered quite grand and beautiful.
Another highlight of this entire program was the live demo of the traditional recipe of making Champaran mutton dish, after which people got a chance to get a taste of it also in the dinner. This live demo and dinner featuring Champaran Mutton was organized by by the ‘Bihar Se… By The Panache’ the food outlet located at Bihar Sadan, Dwarka.
At the end of the program, Bihar Foundation CEO Kundan Kumar honored director Ranjan Kumar and actress Falak Khan. Ashish K Singh, while expressing his gratitude on behalf of New Delhi Film Foundation, to Bihar Foundation & all contributors, said that in future many more such events will continue to be organized under the ‘Cinema of India’ campaign to support and promote good cinema.
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