NEW DELHI: The Osian's-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema is set to give away the Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Cinema, a newly introduced category, to filmmaker Mrinal Sen.

The writer’s award, renamed as the Aruna Vasudev Lifetime Achievement Award for writing on cinema, will be conferred on Jose "Pete" F. Lacaba from the Philippines.

The awards will be presented during the Festival, held in New Delhi from 10 to 20 July 2008.

Around 200 feature and short fiction films from around 40 countries are to be screened at this year’s Osian's-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema.

Addressing a press meet here today, Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art Chairman Neville Tuli announced that the award money this year would be approximately $ 250, 000 for the competition sections and lifetime achievement awards. The winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented Rs. 800,000 each.

The Best Films in the Asian-Arab and Indian Competition sections will be awarded Rs two million each and the best director in each section will win Rs 800,000.

The special jury award and the best actor and actress will each take away Rs 200,000. The best first feature will receive Rs 200,000 in addition to a guaranteed support of Rs 800,000 from FOOD: The Film Fund - Osian's Originating Development, created by Osian's, for the next feature film.

An Audience Award is also being set up for a film in competition and will win Rs 200,000.

The new competition section dealing with themes of In-Tolerance has been created this year to showcase feature and documentary films that respond to or deal with the intolerance of our times. The best film in this category will take home a cash award of Rs 800,000.

Indonesian actress and producer Christine Hakim will preside over the international jury of the forthcoming 10th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema next month. The Indian members of the juries are: Ketan Mehta, Sai Paranjpye, Nagesh Kukunoor, Bappaditya Bandopadhyay, Arun Khopkar and Meena Karnik.


The event will also unveil the scale model of the Osianama, Osian’s flagship cultural complex. The seven-section Osianama, which will open in Mumbai in mid-2009, will house two screens apart from a debating house for discussion on cinema.

In addition, it will have Osian’s film house, archives and offices for its other activities.

Furthermore, Latika Padgaonkar and Indu Shrikent have taken over the realms of the festival in Delhi with its director Aruna Vasudev, founder of the festival in 1999, deciding to step down.