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Apichatpong Weerasethakul (guest at the first Kino otok presenting Blissfully Yours; and whose Wordly Desires was screened at last year's festival) has cancelled the local release of his last film Syndromes and a Century after Thai censors insisted that four ``sensitive'' scenes had to be cut.

The world’s first and largest co-production market, Rotterdam Film Festival's CineMart, has recently announced its selection of forty-six independent film projects to be discussed in January 2007. Amongst the lucky directors of developing projects we can find many old guests of Isola Cinema (Pablo Trapero, Lav Diaz, Raya Martin) and certainly plenty of names that are yet to become our friends.

Last November the biggest filmindustry on the planet released a remake of Umrao Jaan. Directed by J.P. Dutta and featuring an all-star cast, noteably Aishwarya Rai (of course in the leading role), this glamorous superproduction comes exactly quarter of a century after Muzaffar Ali's intelligent, poetic and simply magnificent cinematic interpretation of the 1905 Urdu novel.

Khavn de la Cruz is one of four directors receiving the '20K grant' for his project MONDOMANILA: HOW I FIXED MY HAIR AFTER A RATHER LONG JOURNEY.

On the occasion of the Peter Mettler retrospective that took place at the last Toronto Film Festival the Canadian-Swiss director put together what he calls a "mini website".

An old friend of Isola Cinema, the Taiwan-based master Tsai Ming-Liang, has -- after the success of his latest film I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Hei yan quan), shot as part of the New Crowned Hope project -- embarked on an expensive new project titled Face.

Our friend Cis Bierinckx has been appointed general and artistic director of the Brussels-based interdisciplinary arts centre with the –to the non-Dutch speaking-- unpronounceable name, the Beursschouwburg.

Dear friends, very happy 2005 for you, too!

I'm happy to hear that Otok is going strong. I'm currently in Brazil, but flying back to Helsinki in a couple of weeks. "Honey Baby" is going to be released in Finland in the end of January and later in Germany, France and Russia.

Thanks for your mail and i too wish all the friends at Isola film festival a happy new year. I have just completed my new film called "Hasina", which deals with the a muslim women and her blind daughter.

Hope I will be able to present the film at Isola sometime in future.

Regards,

Girish Kasaravalli

Your email reminded me of a nice time I had in Slovenia - albeit short. I remember I was enjoying Kitano's outdoor screening even though I didn't understand a word. I wish I could go back to experience the sun and the people again in the future.