MFF workshops cancelled for Yash Chopra's funeral

Actress Jaya Bachchan, who was to take an acting workshop at the ongoing 14th Mumbai Film Festival (MFF), has cancelled it to attend filmmaker Yash Chopra's funeral Monday.

Yash Chopra, 80, died here Sunday after multiple organ failure. He was cremated at the Vile Parle crematorium.

The workshop was scheduled between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Also, the open forum discussion by Shyam Shroff, Prahlad Kakkar, Mayank Shekhar, Amit Khanna, and Kamal Gianchandani, scheduled between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., has also been cancelled for the same reason.

But the rest of the festival will go as planned. However, a minute of silence will be observed before every screening as a mark of respect to the legend.

Yash Chopra was a trustee of the Mumbai Film Festival, organised by Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) and the organisers felt that cancelling screenings would be a discourtesy to him.

"He enjoyed making and screening films and to stop screening films is a discourtesy to him. He was the founder member of Mumbai Film Festival, the person who made MFF. We will pay homage to him by screening all the films without any glitch," festival director Srinivasan Narayanan said.

Yash Chopra is survived by wife Pamela and two sons - Aditya and Uday. While Aditya is a filmmaker, Uday is an actor.

In his over five-decade-long career, Yash Chopra made all kinds of films, but he is known for giving romance a new meaning with all-time favourites like "Daag", "Kabhi Kabhi", "Silsila", "Chandni", and "Dil To Pagal Hai" and his own favourite "Lamhe".

Before his death, he was busy shooting for "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" with Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma. He had completed the entire schedule except for a song. The film is slated for a Diwali release Nov 13.