HYDERABAD: The 1st Jam­shoro International Chil­d­ren’s Films Festival 2015 was opened at a ceremony held in the Pir Has­samuddin Rashdi Audito­rium of the Institute of Sindhology at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro campus, on Monday.

The six-day festival has been organised by the institute in collaboration with The Little Art, a Lahore-based group.

The ceremony was attended by nearly 300 students of various schools of Jamshoro.

Film star Mustafa Qureshi, deans Dr Abdul Rasool Abbasi, Dr Anwar Khan Pathan, Sajid Qayoom Memon, Dr Mehmood Mughal, Prof Naimatullah Khilji, Syed Sajjad Hussain Shah and others were among the prominent people who attended the ceremony.

Inaugurating the festival, acting Vice Chancellor of SU Prof Dr Parveen Shah expressed her pleasure over sharing ideas presented by young children and youths at the event.

She said it was very crucial for children and youths to experience cultures and learn from the media, like film, which had become a tool for education all over the world. Dr Shah said Mustafa Qureshi belonged to Sindh but his talent was recognised across the world.

The Jamshoro festival will showcase 45 films — 10 Pakistani and the rest from abroad — selected from among 400 received from 35 countries to suit viewers of all age groups, especially children.

“The festival reached Sindh University this year after its successful holding in Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore and Islamabad. It has also become an international competition of quality films for children and youth. It took almost a year to collect the films from 27 countries,” festival director Shoaib Iqbal said.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mustafa Qureshi said Sindh and music were inseparable. “I mostly worked in Punjab but my soul lives in Sindh,” he remarked, and urged sponsors in Sindh to make investments in producing Sindhi films.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2015

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