February 03, 2009	Tuesday	Safar 07, 1430

KARACHI, Feb 2: The Seventh KaraFilm Festival will open on Feb 4 at the Arts Council of Pakistan in which feature films, documentaries and short films will be screened.

The director of the KaraFilm Festival, Hassan Zaidi, said this while addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Monday.

He said that the political turmoil and security challenges in the country had forced the organisers to postpone the event twice during the past two years.

“In the last few months we have been hit by inflation in Pakistan and global economic recession, imperilling the financial resources for the festival,” he said, adding that due to the financial crises the festival would have no opening and closing ceremonies.

He said that the rising tension with India after the Mumbai terror attacks also negatively impacted the festival. He said that the 7th KaraFilm Festival would be different from the past ones because no delegates would come from India and other countries.

Mr Zaidi maintained that although some Indian delegates wanted to come to Pakistan, the Pakistan government did not give them visas. “Our goals are always to somehow compensate for the festival’s absence over the last two years,” he observed.

“There are 230 films in our full programme, including over 120 short films, over 60 documentaries and some 50 feature films,” he said.

He said that the 10-day festival would cover some 44 countries, from Australia to Norway, and from South Korea to Colombia and many of the films had won different awards while most of them had never screened in the country before.—PPI