Archive - 11th Five Flavours Film Festival
NETPAC Jury
NETPAC is a worldwide non-profit organization set up with the aim to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of Asian films and filmmakers.
Festivals associated in the network present the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film to acknowledge and promote excellence of Asian cinema. Five Flavours Film Festival is a NETPAC member since 2016.
In 2017 NETPAC jury members were:
Sonali Joshi
Film curator and specialist distributor focusing on independent Asian cinema, as well as a subtitler. She is the Founder and Director of Day for Night, a London based film organisation working across festivals, distribution and subtitling. She holds a PhD in Cinema Studies and regularly gives guest lectures on film festivals, film distribution and audio-visual translation at UK universities. She is the curator of a season of Indian films marking 70 years of independence and Partition entitled "India at 70" currently taking place in cinemas across the UK. Sonali is also Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival, the only UK festival covering the whole of the Asian and Pacific regions, set to launch in the UK in 2018. As a distributor, she has sought to create a wider platform for distinctive independent Asian films in the UK, having released acclaimed titles including "Court" (Chaitanya Tamhane), "Tharlo" (Pema Tseden) and "By the Time it Gets Dark" (Anocha Suwichakornpong).
SIDDIQ BARMAK
Siddiq Barmak was born in Afghanistan in 1962. He earned his MA in cinema from the VGIK Institute in Moscow. His debut feature, "Osama" (2003), won awards at the Festival de Cannes, the Pusan Film Festival and was named best foreign-language film at the Golden Globe Awards (2004). His second film, "Opium War" (2008), was named Best Film at the Rome Film Festival. He is also known for his documentaries, "The Disaster of Withering" (1988), "Narration of Victory" (1991) and "Invasion File" (1997). Besides, he produced films such as "An Apple from Paradise" (2009) and "The Neighbor" (2010). He is the founder of Barmak Films.
CÜNEYT CEBENOYAN
Film critic and an actor. His involvement in cinema started at the unviersity film club during his studies at the Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University when he participated in the making of short films. His first film criticism appeared in 1992 in the monthly Antrakt magazine. Roll, Express, Sinerama, Sinema, Empire, Altyazi and Milliyet Sanat are among the magazines where his pieces are published. Cuneyt Cebenoyan has acted in film such as "Hayatboyu" (Lifelong; 2013), "Gözümün Nuru" (Eye Am; 2013), "Dar Elbise" (Tight Dress, 2016) and in the tv series "Çıplak Gerçek" (Naked Truth, 2014). He also directed and acted in a short film "Korkaklar" (Cowards; 2015) which took part in the Rode Tulp Film Festival in 2016. He is a member of FIPRESCI and NETPAC and has taken part in the juries of numerous festivals. He currently writes film reviews at Birgün, a daily newspaper distributed nationwide. Besides, he is a radio programmer and runs a radio show focused on cinema at Acik Radio.
NETPAC was founded in 1990 by Aruna Vasudev as the result of a conference organized in New Delhi by Cinemaya, The Asian Film Quarterly, at the request of UNESCO.
It was set up with the aim to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of Asian films and filmmakers at a time when Asian cinema was just coming into its own but was relatively unknown regionally and internationally.
Cinemaya, launched independently by Aruna Vasudev in 1988, became the official journal of NETPAC.
NETPAC brought to international attention independent and non-mainstream films by new directors whose works might well have remained unknown because of a lack of publicity and promotion caused by lack of funds and resources.
Among initiatives that NETPAC has taken over the past 25 years are:
- Presentation of the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film at more than 40 film festivals throughout the world.
- Publishing and co-publishing books on Asian cinema, among which are: "Modernity & Nationality in Vietnamese Cinema" by Ngo Phuong Lan, the first book on Vietnamese cinema in English by a Vietnamese author; "When Strangers Meet: Visions of Asia & Europe in Film", co-published by NETPAC and the Asia-Europe Foundation, Singapore; translation of the book entitled "Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema" by Tadao Sato; "An Incomplete Sentence – The Cinema of Dharmasena Pathiraja"; "Early Sri Lankan Cinema in Association with South Indian Film Industry"; "Asian Film Journeys: Selections from Cinemaya"; "Malaysian Cinema in a Bottle" by Hassan Abd Muthalib.
- Conferences on Asian cinema have been organized since 1991 in Yamagata, Hawaii, Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi and Jogjakarta.
- Cinefan, the NETPAC Festival of Asian Cinema, which was launched in New Delhi in 1999 and the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival (JAFF), launched in Jogjakarta in 2007.
- The APSA NETPAC Development Prize launched in collaboration with The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), worth US$10,000 and awarded to an emerging filmmaker from Asia.
NETPAC also played an instrumental role in the development of Asiapacificfilms.com which is an Asian Pacific digital film library streaming artistic and culturally significant films from Asia and the Pacific. The site was launched in October 2009 and now has a wide network of contacts among film festivals, film organizations, government and non-government agencies, film scholars, critics, programmers and festival directors with whom we work collaboratively in mutually beneficial activities to advance the cause of Asian cinema.