NEW DELHI: Festival director SM Khan said the 41st International Film Festival of India had created a new watermark with as many as 8,500 delegates from India and overseas.

Khan said this is almost 2000 more than last year. In addition, around 400 mediapersons had registered for the Festival.

While the Festival had implemented some of the short-term recommendations of the Expert Committee on IFFI headed by Pritish Nandy, he said long-term recommendations were still under study with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. These included adoption of a private public partnership mode for organising the Festival through a new Society to be formed for this purpose, and acceptance of sponsorships.

Khan announced that a new Convention Centre and larger theatre would be ready in Panaji for the film festival by 2014.

In a mid-fest press meet, Joint Director Shankar Mohan said the aim of selection had been to bring to India filmmakers who had not been seen too frequently in this country. But creative art is about individual perception, he said, while responding to certain criticisms about choice of films.