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Film industry luminaries have paid fulsome homage to Indian DoP Santosh Sivan, this year’s recipient of the annual Pierre Angénieux ExcelLens in Cinematography award conferred during the Cannes Film Festival.

Hosted by professional cinema lens manufacturer Angénieux at Cannes, the award pays tribute to a renowned cinematographer and recognizes an emerging talent. Estonian-u.S cinematographer Kadri Koop will receive the Angénieux special encouragement honor.

Sivan has shot 55 feature films, including “Roja,” “Thalapathi,” “Dil Se” and “Iruvar” for Mani Ratnam, Cannes selection “Vanaprastham” for Shaji N. Karun, “Meenaxi” for M.F. Hussain and “Bride and Prejudice” for Gurinder Chadha, amongst many others. He has also shot more than 50 documentaries and directed 17 feature films including Sundance selection “The Terrorist” and Venice and Toronto selection “Asoka,” produced by and starring Shah Rukh Khan. Sivan is the first Indian member of the American Society of Cinematographers.

The DoP is the first Asian recipient of the Angénieux award,...

MollywoodThe film, which has not been titled yet, will see Manju Warrier, Kalidas Jayaram and Soubin Shahir in the lead. Digital NativeIt was earlier announced that cinematographer-director Santosh Sivan would be making a Malayalam film after a long while, with Manju Warrier and Kalidas Jayaram in the lead. Reports are that shooting of the film, which has not been titled yet, has begun and is progressing in Alappuzha. It has been a while since Santosh Sivan has wielded the megaphone for a Malayalam movie. The last Malayalam film he directed is the Prithviraj starrer Urumi, back in 2011. But now, after having cranked the camera for the Mani Ratnam directorial Chekka Chivantha Vaanam, Santosh Sivan is completely busy with his directorial that will have Soubin Shahir too in the lead, along with Manju Warrier and Kalidas Jayaram. Touted to be a thriller, the film will also have Aju Varghese, Suraj Venjaramoodu...

Back when they dominated the arthouse scene with films like A Room With A View and Howard's End, producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory engendered such animus among critics that "Merchant-Ivory" become a pejorative phrase, shorthand for inert costume dramas or literary adaptations with the veneer of quality. Merchant's death three years ago put an end to their collaboration, but the Merchant-Ivory label lives on, and it now applies all-too-suitably to Before The Rains, the turgid English-language debut of Indian director-cinematographer Santosh Sivan (The Terrorist). All the expected hallmarks are there: sumptuous production values and pretty (though inexpressive) photography, undercooked melodrama, and political metaphor so obvious that it doesn't merit being referred to as subtext. Everything is right there on the surface. Set in colonial India in 1937, Before The Rains takes place in a remote area in the southern part of the country, where the growing nationalist...

Roadside Attractions has nabbed a pair of Toronto International Film Festival world premieres: Santosh Sivan's romantic drama Before the Rains, starring Linus Roache, and Tarsem's epic fantasy The Fall.

Rains stars Roache as a British entrepreneur in 1937 colonial India who begins an extramarital affair with a local servant (Nandita Das). When their relationship is exposed, and his wife (Jennifer Ehle) returns from England, his future and the servant's life are put in jeopardy.

Doug Mankoff, Andrew Spaulding, Paul Hardart, Tom Hardart and Mark Burton produced the film from Indian director Sivan (The Terrorist). The film premiered in September and will be released next year.

Music video director Tarsem's Fall, set in a 1920s hospital, centers on a fantastical story told to a young girl (Catinca Untaru) with a broken collarbone by an injured stuntman (Lee Pace). The films brings the tale of five heroes who escape from a desert island to life with violent and surreal imagery channeled through the girl's imagination.

IndieVest Inc. CEO and founder Wade H. Bradley on Thursday announced the formation of IndieVest Pictures, an independent feature film company dedicated to bringing midlevel budget films to the marketplace.

Mark Burton, who executive produced Deepa Mehta's Water, has been tapped president of production. Matt Wall has been named vp development. A president of distribution will be announced soon.

IndieVest Pictures is launching its film slate by acquiring Tanuja Desai Hidier's novel Born Confused, a coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old New Jersey teen who is an only child to loving East Indian parents. Reggie Miller and Gail D'Agostino will produce.

Burton's producing credits include Chad Lowe's Beautiful Ohio and Santosh Sivan's The Terrorist.

Wall segues to IndieVest with more than 10 years of experience working in the acquisitions and co-production departments at New Line Cinema and Universal Pictures. He co-founded Rogue Pictures, which at the time was a genre production and releasing division of October Films. He also was a development and acquisitions executive at USA Films, which released several Academy Award-winning and -nominated films including Traffic and Gosford Park.

NEW YORK -- Los Angeles-based Echo Lake Prods. has inked deals with two international directors in a new initiative to create a series of English-language films by renowned foreign helmers, called World Visions. The plan was announced as the Toronto International Film Festival kicked off Thursday night. The first talents signed under World Visions are Indian helmer Santosh Sivan (The Terrorist) and Singapore's CheeK (aka Cheah Chee Kong of Chicken Rice War). Finance and production unit Echo Lake (Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Things Behind the Sun) is developing World Visions with German director Faith Akin. The program seeks to "give directors from around the world an opportunity to reach out to English-speaking audiences."...