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entertainmentwww.biztechreport.comBollywood Shares its GreatestLove as PiFan Closesby Sun BangThe 15th annual PuchonInternational FantasticFilm Festival (July 14-24) in Korea opened withRakeysh Omprakash Mehra’sThe Greatest Love Story EverTold, the Bollywood documentarycelebrating Indianmusicals.The film made its world premiere at theFestival de Cannes out of competition andmade the Asian premier at PiFan this pastJuly. Mehra, who is most well-known forRang De Basanti (2006), was expected to attendedthe festival’s opening ceremony withan ensemble of Indian and international castto celebrate this special screening occasion.But unfortunately he could not attend theevent because of some unavoidable situationback home.Bollywood movies, films created in thepopular style representative of India’s cinemaindustry, now stand firm as one of Asia’smajor cultural resources with sufficient ripplepower to reach all corners of the globe. InKorea, several Bollywood movies have beenshown with much heated response. Thegenre is now being combined with fantasyand science fiction, increasing entertainmentvalue, and the Greatest Love Story Ever Toldpleased the eyes and ears of the viewers forthe entire 81 minutes, displaying dazzlingscenes with the charms of the songs.The Asian films in Puchon Choice featured36 | A-P BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY REPORTcompetition including Mongolia’s OperationTatar, Malaysia’s Resurrection, Hong Kong’sRevenge: A Love Story, Japan’s SlapstickBrothers and South Korea’s The Yellow Sea.Also, this year’s lineup had a strong selectionof Southeast Asian horrors, including Indonesia’sThe Perfect House, Thailand OmnibusFour and, from Malaysia, Claypot Curry Killersand Limah Goes Home. Also from Thailand,the festival screened Friday Killer andSaturday Killer, the first two parts of YuthlertSippapak’s multi-genre hitman series.Other highlights in the World FantasticCinema section included the award-winningInvasion of Alien Bikini, Dante Lam’s TheStool Pigeon and Hong Kong-set thriller RedNights, directed by Julien Carbon and LaurentCourtiaud. The Vision Express sectionexplored the boundaries of Asian genre filmswith Singapore’s Forever, Japan’s Hospitalitéand Ringing in Their Ears and, from Taiwan,Honey Pupu and Make Up.Ever since PiFan’s 7th hosting in 2003 includeda special section for Bollywood movies,PiFan has introduced new Bollywoodmovies every year with special affection. Byopening the 15th festival this year with aBollywood movie, PiFan attempted to moreactively showcase Bollywood films to Asianand international moviegoers.The festival screened 221 films (127 featuresand 94 shorts) from 34 countries, includingnotable Bollywood films such as AbhinavKashyap’s Dabang, S. Shankar’s Robot,and Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om, of whichapproximately 78 percent of screenings weresold out completely. Top-sellers were Gantz:Perfect Answer, Detective Conan: Magician ofthe Silver Key, while the top selling Koreanfilm was PiFan’s closing choice, The Blind. A-P