National Children’s Film Fest off to a colourful start in Vizag

Visakhapatnam: The second National Children’s Film Festival took off on a colourful note here on Friday.Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting M Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated the festival at VUDA Children’s Arena. This 3-day long film extravaganza for the children will entertain them during the next two days.

Highlights:

• 40,000 children are expected to watch 24 CFSI films during the 3-day event
• Workshops on filmmaking and animation to be conducted

Opening film “Shanu – The Optimist” directed by KNT Sastry and produced by CFSI in 2016, was screened after the inaugural session.Venkaiah, speaking on the occasion said, “Cinema is a great medium for everyone. It makes a huge impact on children, and we hope that the children’s cinema will be able to promote not only our culture, language and music but also will help in social reforms.

”“Cinema, we hope will not only help in imparting knowledge but also in popularising campaigns like Swachh Bharat, Make-in-India etc. apart from communicating about the issues of social equality and nationality among our children,” he added. Child artist, Nikhileshwar, well known for his role in Bahubali, where he played young Bahubali, marked his presence as guest of honor.

HRD minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao, Vizag MP K Haribabu, Anakapalle MP M Srinivas Rao, actor and chairman of CFSI Mukesh Khanna and CEO of CFSI Dr. Shravan Kumar were present. More than 40,000 children are expected to watch over 24 CFSI films at this festival across 12 screens in the city.

There will be daily 3 shows at each screen. A Kuchipudi performance, shadow act play and other cultural performances by the child artistes’ groups were the highlights of the inaugural function. During the next two days, workshops for children will be conducted.