India will screen 35 films ranging from V Shantaram's 1934 classic "Amrit Manthan" to last year's "Paheli" at its cultural festival in Brussels next month, the first such event in Europe in almost one-and-a-half decades.

The four-month event, organised as part of New Delhi's cultural diplomacy, will offer to the European palate pungent Indian cuisine, with chefs from Puducherry and Delhi preparing idlis, dosas and tandoori chicken at a Brussels hotel.

Exhibitions, performing arts, a fashion show, seminars and literary meetings will be the other features of the Festival of India to be inagurated by the Queen of Belgium on October 7 in Brussels, Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) chief Karan Singh told a news conference here today.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi is scheduled to attend the inauguration on November 11 of an exhibition on 1,500 years of iconic Indian art. The event called Tejas, or energy, will feature what Singh described as multiple definitions of the divine.

Designers Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Raghvendra Rathore have been selected to showcase handcrafted creations at a fashion show planned for December 8 there.

Also on display will be a rare collection of 47 rare 18th-century Kangra-style paintings from October 7 to October 10.

India held its last cultural festival in Europe in 1992 in Germany.

Singh, who said the ICCR aims to hold such events on a regular basis, spoke about plans to organise an Indian cultural festival in Japan next year.

--- PTI