MUMBAI: Mumbai International Film Festival (Miff) 2008 which starts on 3 February, will be different this year. Though the festival is related to documentary, short and animation films, it will see active participation from stalwarts of the Hindi film industry.

Miff 2008 festival director and Film Division chief producer Kuldeep Sinha says, ''For the first time Bollywood is participating in the festival in a big way.''

Noted director, producer and writer Basu Chatterjee will inaugurate the 'Homage' section, which will screen memorable movies of filmmakers like K Vishwanath, Girish Vaidya and noted cinematographer KK Mahajan, Sinha informed.

Renowned director Jahnu Barua and Jabbar Patel will be present at the inauguration of 'Glimpses of Films Division', which will showcase selected movies made by the directors of Film Division on the entire spectrum of development in India since 1948.

Special package of 'International Students Films' from Whistling Woods will be inaugurated by the Showman of Bollywood Subhash Ghai.

This package will screen the films shown at Pune International Film Festival 2008 as part of the International Students Film Competition.

Films from SAARC countries will be inaugurated by director and producer Mahesh Bhatt while the special package on the legends of cinema called the 'Film Memoirs' will be inaugurated by Yash Chopra, Sinha added.

Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Lt Gen (Retd) SK Sinha will inaugurate the 'Retrospective' on 4 February, where special films on the Second World War will be showcased.

While the inauguration of the 'Homage', 'Glimpses of Film Division' and the student's films from Whistling Woods will be on 4 February, films from SAARC countries and 'Film Memoirs' will be inaugurated on 5 February, a release said.

Miff 2008 will have separate sections of films from the SAARC countries, South Africa, and Brazil.

There will be a section called ‘Best of Festivals’ for selected films from some renowned documentary, short and animation film festivals and Oscar winning and nominated films, a retrospective of films by jury members, a section of Classics featuring films of great masters of documentary films which will have movies made by Great Masters like Bert Haanstra, Robert J. Flaherty, Francois Truffaut, Istvan Szabo, Kristof Zanussi and Ritwik Ghatak. This package will be organized with the support of National Film Archive of India.

A Film Memoir shows biographical films made on great filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, and Bimal Roy, while Adult Cartoons is a collection of animation films made for adult viewers by the National Film Board of Canada.

There is a special and rarely seen section on films on the Second World War with rarest film records of the Indian troops in action at various part of the world during Second World War. This will also feature the battle of Britain , Russia and other major incidents of that period. This package is being organized with the help of the Armed Forces Film & Photo Division, Delhi.

There will also be sections for films from the North East and from Jammu and Kashmir, and Glimpses from the archives of the Division, apart from homage to filmmakers who passed away in the recent past.