19th Madurai Film Festival 2017 - We are ready!

19th Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2017

6-10 December

Around 80 films; interactions; master classes!

Organised by MARUPAKKAM

In association with Arul Anandhar College – Karumathur, Department of Tamil – Gandhigram Rural Institute, Department of Communication – Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai Media and Film Studies Academy, LENS Media Centre, IDEAS, Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, Kaleidoscope, Advocates Association – Madurai Bench of Madras High Court, Media Collective (New Delhi) and International Institute of Art, Culture and Democracy (Bangalore)

Screening Schedule :

6 Dec : Arul Anandhar College, Karumathur (10 am to 4 pm), Kaleidoscope (5 pm to 8 pm), LENS Media Centre (4 pm to 8 pm)

7 Dec : Department of Tamil, Gandhigram Rural Institute, Gandhigram (10 am to 4 pm), Advocates Association, Madurai Bench of Madras High Court (5 pm to 8 pm), Kaleidoscope (5 pm to 8 pm), LENS Media Centre (4 pm to 8 pm)

8 Dec : Department of Communication, Madurai Kamaraj University, Palkalai Nagar (10 am to 4 pm), Kaleidoscope (5 pm to 8 pm), LENS Media Centre (4 pm to 8 pm)

9 Dec : Madurai Media and Film Studies Academy (10 am to 4 pm), IDEAS (10 am to 4 pm), Kaleidoscope (5 pm to 8 pm), LENS Media Centre (4 pm to 8 pm)

10 Dec : Tamilnadu Theological Seminary (10 am to 4 pm), Kaleidoscope (5 pm to 8 pm), LENS Media Centre (4 pm to 8 pm)

Highlights:

Indian films

International films

Retrospective I: Sameera Jain, editor/filmmaker/teacher (New Delhi)

Retrospective II: Patrick Rouxel, filmmaker (Paris)

Filmmaker in Focus: Gitanjali Rao, filmmaker (Mumbai)

Alpavirama: Students films from Asia – Curated by Arun Gupta, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad

CINEMA OF PRAYOGA: THE RIGOUR OF AUSTERITY - Special package curated by Amrit Gangar, film critic / curator / teacher (Mumbai)

Marupakkam – Director’s Cut: curated by Amudhan R.P.

19th Madurai Film Festival - Screening Schedule : Day 5, 10 December 2017

19th Madurai Film Festival - Screening Schedule : Day 5, 10 December 2017

Day 5; 10 December at Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, Arasaradi

9:30 am Miryavar Kahi Mahine (Many Months in Mirya)

Dir: Renu Sawant; 3 hours 50 min; Marathi with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India

In 2015, I stayed and shot in my ancestral village in western coastal India, and the film is a record of this village during that time. The resulting film flows into stories of people and events happening in the village. The subject's canvass demanded the scale of the longer narrative form, like a novel in digital video.

1:30 Lunch break

2:00 pm A Quiet Little Entry (Sameera Jain Retro)

Dir: Uma Chakravarthi; 44 min; 2010; Edited by Sameera Jain

The film is about an unknown woman, Subbalakshmi who lived between the salt pans and thousands of other places in her mind and left behind a trunk, a diary and scraps of paper. She had participated like many others in the movement for independence in the 1920's and 30's but was forced by circumstances to withdraw from active participation. It is a film about the choices women are denied but who struggle to find other ways of expressing their resistance.

The film was shot on location in south India and uses archival material from both the public and the family archive. It experiments with form by evoking the protagonist through suggestion; it uses photographs, camerawork, music and a voiceover to tell the story of Subbalakshmi.

2:45 Interaction with Sameera Jain, editor

3:00 pm A Night of Prophecy (Sameera Jain Retro)

Dir: Amar Kanwar; 77 min; multiple Indian languages; 2002; Edited by Sameera Jain

Through poetry emerges the possibility of understanding the past, the severity of conflict and the cycles of change. The film travels in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland and Kashmir. Through poetry you see where all the territories are heading towards, where you belong, and where to intervene, if you want to. The narratives merge, allowing us to see a mere universal language of symbols and meanings. This moment of merger is the simple moment of prophecy.

4:20 Interaction with Sameera Jain, editor

Day 05, 10 Dec 2017 at LENS Media Centre, Gnanaolipuram

4:00 Saints of Sin

Dir: Aniruddha Sen; 80 min; English; Documentary; India

The Saints of Sin is a lyrical journey of emotion and experiences of Seven and a Half Bengali women spread all over the globe between Nairobi to New York to New Delhi and Bombay. Built on intimate conversations recorded over three years, the film explores the lives of Debbie, Runa, Srila, Gopi, Shreya, Swati, Paro and Pradipta, where each of them acknowledges her propensity towards one of the Sins and speaks of her negotiations with it.

5:20 Interaction

5:30pm Patrick Rouxel Retrospective

Life is One (Dir: Patrick Rouxel; 56 min; 2016)

“Life is One” is the story of three orphan sun bear cubs from Indonesia and their return to the wild. The story is told by the foster parent of these cubs who accompanied them to their independence. The viewer is placed in total immersion with the bears in the rainforest and discovers how beautiful, joyful and energetic they are. The film is a tribute to life on earth, a reminder that we are all connected and that we owe respect and compassion to those we share the planet with.

6:30 Closing Ceremony

10 Dec; Kaleidscope

5:00 pm Kid (Dir:Aarish Krishnan; 2 min; No dialogue; Short fiction; India)

A film on run away and lost children.

5:05 Mahaantham (Dir: Sridhar Sudhir; 28 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; Short fiction; India

Mahaantam deals with the effect of nationalism on our daily lives. It follows the story of Gauri, a 7 year old girl from a small town in Bihar, who bears witness to a series of events around her motivated by a simple question 'Why is my India Great?'.

5:30 pm Like Dust We Rise (Dir: Abhimanyu Kumar, Arya A.T., Garima Kaul and Prerna Gupta ; 23 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India)

This is a film about those who clean the city of dreams. It brings to the fore, through the narratives of a few BMC workers, the lackadaisical workings of the Bombay Municipal Corporation resulting in injustice to the workers. Kali, Murugan, Anthony, Aziz, Saroja and Rajeshwari carry the narrative forward as they narrate personal incidents of injuries and accidents on field, for which they have not received any compensation.

6:00 pm Interaction

6:15 Apoptosis (Dir : Tomas Gorkic; 18 min; Slovenian with Eng subtitles; Short fiction; Slovenia

The year is 2074. Total pollution of the Earth. Food shortages. The fall of governments and systems. Control is taken over by Bionet Corporation, which guarantees food with their main alimentary product, Biogreen. States become sectors under the administration of Bionet Corporation.

6:20 Bystander 9Dir: Sheyda Kashi; 8:23 min; No dialogue; Animation; Iran)

How many of us just watch? How many of us participate?

6:30 Cartas Ciegas (Dir: Angel Jaquem; 14:45; Spanish with Eng subtitles; Short fiction; Spain

The bosom of a family is shattered after the father's departure to Second World War.

6:45 The Impasse (Dir: Alina Mikhailova; 17 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Short fiction; Russia

Poland, 1943. Two married couples find themselves confined in a narrow first-class compartment they will have to share the whole journey long. An inconvenience which annoys them... Each protagonist is at the end of their rope. The train represents the only chance to save themselves and their respective loved ones, to escape from the hell of an occupied country.

7:00 Intervalo (Dir: Eduardo Maia; Mariana Vilhena; Pedro Gomes; Tiago Sá; 2:30 min; No dialogue; Animation; Portugal)

At class break there’s space to travel in a book.

7:05 Video Volunteers

A collection of short videos by Video Volunteers from across the country.

7:30 Interaction

19th Madurai Film Festival - Screening Schedule : Day 4, 9 Dec 2017

19th Madurai Film Festival - Screening Schedule : Day 4, 9 Dec 2017

Day 4: 9 Dec 2017 at Madurai Media and Film Studies Academy, Old Natham Road
11 am to 4 pm

Master Class by Sameera Jain, filmmaker / editor / teacher

Day 4: 9 Dec 2017 at IDEAS Centre, Madurai

10 am Campus Rising (Dir: Yousuf Saeed; 73 mins; Hindi and English with Eng subtitles)

While the students' unrest continues in many cities, this film travels to some seven Indian universities (including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Hyderabad Central University and Banaras Hindu University among others) to record what the students and some teachers have to say about how their freedom is being curtailed, and how this movement will not die until they bring some change of perception about the rights of the underprivileged.

11:15 Interaction

11:30 Our Gauri (Dir: Deepu; 67 min; English (subtitles); 2017)

Gauri Lankesh was one of the Karnataka’s most prominent and fearless journalists. She was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru on the night of 5th September, 2017. Gauri spoke out against communal forces in the country and represented dissent and freedom of speech.

The film is more than a personal tribute and follows her political journey, envisaging what she stood for and her struggle for communal harmony until her last breath. And her life story has become the history of Karnataka’s fight against right-wing communal forces.

12:40 Interaction

1:00 Lunch break

2:00 Kakkoos

Dir: Divya Bharathi; 108 min; Tamil with English subtitles; Documentary; India

The documentary, shot in 25 districts for over a year, conveys the message that even though manual scavenging was banned in India in 2013 it continues to exist and conservancy workers are involved in removing human waste. The film is dedicated to those who maintain a “false silence on manual scavenging”.

3:50 pm Interaction with Divya Bharathi

Day 04, 8 Dec 2017 at LENS Media Centre, Gnanaolipuram

4:00 pm This is like Gold Only (Dir: Ujjwal Utkarsh; 78 min; Maithili/English/Hindi; Documentary; India)

Makhana farming is a specialized and painstaking process practised by farmers of the Mallah community of North Bihar. A species similar to the lotus family, the fox nut plants are cultivated in ponds and their seed of are collected from the bottom of the lake. Through an elaborate process of popping by hand on high heat we get 'makhana' in a state which can be packed and sold. Despite health risks to them, makhana cultivators continue to follow this process.

5:20 Interaction

5:35 Nicobar, a long way (Dir: Richa Hushing; 65 min; Nicobarese, Hindi and English; Documentary; India)

Deep in the Bay of Bengal, the Nicobar archipelago, a tribal reserve protected under Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, was worst hit by the Tsunami of 26th December 2004. Self-subsistent and relatively isolated, post Tsunami the aboriginal world was suddenly invaded.

6:40 Interaction

7:00 Patrick Rouxel Retrospective

The Cathedral Forest (Dir: Patrick Rouxel; 45 min; 2007)

In Gabon, Africa, the Minkebe Conservation Project team is dedicated to the preservation of a vast forest of 32 000 km2 which holds the largest population of forest elephants in the world. This forest is undergoing many threats: logging, mining, bush meat hunting and the poaching of elephants for ivory. The Cathedral Forest is a call to the citizens of the world to help WWF Gabon in its efforts to preserve the Minkebe forest.

7:45 Interaction

8 Dec; Kaleidoscope

5:00 pm Patrick Rouxel Retrospective

Tears of wood (Dir: Patrick Rouxel; 26 min; 2004)

A visual essay on the extraordinary biodiversity of the Indonesian rainforest. This silent film follows the peaceful wondering of a dominant male orangutan, showing the forest from his point of view. It also underlines the link between tropical hardwood and the trees of the rainforest. This is the first film I made when I decided to do my part to help rainforest conservation in 2003. The title of the film is also the name of this website because it seems to capture the essence of all my films.

5:30 Interaction

5:45 Sameera Jain Retrospective

A Season Outside (Dir: Amar Kanwar; 32 min; 1997; Edited by Sameera Jain)

There is perhaps, no border outpost in the world quite like Wagah, where this film begins its exploration. An outpost where every evening people are drawn to a thin white line… and probably anyone in the eye of a conflict could find themselves here. A Season Outside is a personal and philosophical journey through past generations, conflicting positions, borders and time zones.

6:15 Interaction with Sameera Jain

6:30 Camera Threat (Dir: Bernd Lützeler; 30 min; Hindi and English; Short film; Germany and India)

Somewhere in the rather dreary spheres of Mumbai's film industry, stuck between star-cult, superstition and the daily gridlock, Camera Threat explores the ambivalent and sometimes paranoid relationship that this film city has with the moving image as such.

7:00 The Simple Day (Dir: Maria Khristoforova; 21 min; Hindi and English; Documentary; Russia and India)

The simple day in the life of rickshaw driver in Delhi, India.

7:25 Interaction

19th Madurai Film Festival- Screening Schedule : Day 3, 8 Dec 2017

19th Madurai Film Festival- Screening Schedule : Day 3, 8 Dec 2017

Day 03; 8 Dec 2017at Palkalai Nagar

Session 01: 10 am to 1 pm

Retrospective 01 – Sameera Jain, filmmaker / editor / teacher

10 am Introduction

10:15 Portraits of Belonging (2 films)

Portraits of Belonging : Bhai Mian

(Dir : Sameera Jain ; 30 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 1998)

Bhai Mian is a kite maker who lives in the last historic Delhi – Shahjahanabad, the city built by Mughal emperor Shahjahan in the 17th century. The film is a portrait of the man in his context, a man whose ordinariness barely conceals his imagination and resilience.

Portraits of Belonging: Sagira Begum

Dir: Sameera Jain; 30 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 1998

Sagira Begum is seventy five years old, and does zari (golden thread) embroidery. She practices an ancestral profession, like many others in the last historic city of Delhi - Shahjahanabad. Her memories are of better times – an environment more open and friendly, an easier lifestyle, better wages.

11:15 : Interaction with Sameera Jain, filmmaker

11:45 Mera Apna Sheher/ My Own City (Dir: Sameera Jain; 56min; 2011)

The experience of a gendered urban landscape - where the gaze, the voice and the body are at all times under surveillance. What if the multiple surveillances were to be turned upon themselves to observe what is contained in the everyday. The film explores whether there is a sense of ownership, of belonging to the city. Can a woman in the city, as she continuously negotiates the polarities of anxiety and comfort - be free?

12:45 Interaction

1:00 Lunch break

Session 02: 2:00 to 4:30 pm

Alpavirama – Students films from Asia, curated by Arun Gupta, NID (Ahmedabad)

Anjaan Raastey (Docu/Pakistan) 24 min

Bilori (Fiction/NID) 21 min

Pottu (Fiction/Award Winner/KRNNIVSA) 06 min

Sagar Manav (Docu/NID) 21 min

Sarus (Fiction/Award Winner/FTII) 20 min

Unusual Summer (Docu/China) 29 min

3:50 Interaction

Day 3: 8 Dec 2017 at LENS Media Centre, Gnanaolipuram

4:00 A Foreigner in My Own Land (Dir: Nishajyoti Sharma; 65 min; Nepali with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India)

Nepalis (Gorkhas) of Assam are not foreigners or outsiders, except for few who may have migrated to Assam (India) post 1971. However, the prevalent sentiment among the Assamese masses is quite contrary to what history says and the Assam Accord of 1985 has agreed to.

5:05 Interaction

5:15 pm: Up, Down and Sideways (Dir: Anushka Meenakshi & Iswar Srikumar; 83 min; Chokri with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India)

Up Down and Sideways’ is a musical portrait of a community of rice cultivators and their memories of love and loss, created from working together on the fields. It is the first feature film from the u-ra-mi-li project, a larger body of work that looks at the connections between music and labour.

6:40 Interaction with the filmmakers

7:00 Small People, Big Trees (Dir: VadimVitostev; 45 min; Baka with Eng subtitles; Documentary; Russia)

The Central African Republic. Here in the shade of sub-panel rainforests lives a tribe of the shortest people on Earth — the Baka pygmies. As it was hundreds years ago they hunt for meat and gather gifts of big trees. They pray to the spirits of the forest and teach their children to respect the forest, to take from it only what is of great need. But little by little their traditional mode is changing under the pressure of the Big World culture.

7:45 Interaction

8 Dec; Kaleidoscope

5:00 pm Patrick Rouxel Retrospective

Tears of wood (Dir: Patrick Rouxel; 26 min; 2004)

A visual essay on the extraordinary biodiversity of the Indonesian rainforest. This silent film follows the peaceful wondering of a dominant male orangutan, showing the forest from his point of view. It also underlines the link between tropical hardwood and the trees of the rainforest. This is the first film I made when I decided to do my part to help rainforest conservation in 2003. The title of the film is also the name of this website because it seems to capture the essence of all my films.

5:30 Interaction

5:45 Sameera Jain Retrospective

A Season Outside (Dir: Amar Kanwar; 32 min; 1997; Edited by Sameera Jain)

There is perhaps, no border outpost in the world quite like Wagah, where this film begins its exploration. An outpost where every evening people are drawn to a thin white line… and probably anyone in the eye of a conflict could find themselves here. A Season Outside is a personal and philosophical journey through past generations, conflicting positions, borders and time zones.

6:15 Interaction with Sameera Jain

6:30 Camera Threat (Dir: Bernd Lützeler; 30 min; Hindi and English; Short film; Germany and India)

Somewhere in the rather dreary spheres of Mumbai's film industry, stuck between star-cult, superstition and the daily gridlock, Camera Threat explores the ambivalent and sometimes paranoid relationship that this film city has with the moving image as such.

7:00 The Simple Day (Dir: Maria Khristoforova; 21 min; Hindi and English; Documentary; Russia and India)

The simple day in the life of rickshaw driver in Delhi, India.

7:25 Interaction

19th Madurai Film Festival - Screening Schedule : Day 2, 7 Dec 2017

19th Madurai Film Festival - Screening Schedule : Day 2, 7 Dec 2017

Day 02; 7 December at Department of Tamil, Gandhigram Rural Institute, Gandhigram

Session 01

CINEMA OF PRAYOGA: THE RIGOUR OF AUSTERITY – Special package by Amrit Gangar, curator / critic / film historian

9:30 am Introduction by Amrit Gangar

10 am: CINEMA OF PRAYOGA (Dir: Amrit Gangar; 40 mins)

Cinema of Prayōga is a conceptual framework that locates the history of experimental film in India within an ancient pre-modern tradition of innovation, of prayōga. Cinema of Prayōga is a theory of filmic practice, which challenges the dominant forms of filmic expression in contemporary India, including the all-pervading Bollywood or the social realism of Indian New Wave.

KRAMASHA (TO BE CONTINUED…) Dir.: Amit Dutta; 2007, 22 mins

An ascetic walks through the narrow streets of a village every morning while his family is still asleep. In his semi-somnolent state he dreams about the history of the village mixing up myths, folklore and facts.

11 am Tea break

11:15 RATI CHAKRAVYUH (Dir: Ashish Avikunthak; 2013, 105 mins)

After a mass wedding during a lunar eclipse, six newlywed couples and a priestess meet to discuss life, death and everything else, which leads them to commit mass suicide.

1:15 Lunch break

Session 02

2:00 pm Missing Reels of Tamil Cinema (Dir: Sugeeth Krishnamoorthy; 100 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India)

'The Missing Film Reels of Thamizh Cinema (1916 - 2016)' is an amateur documentary project that attempts to chronicle the history and evolution of Thamizh cinema in its hundred year history, with a specific focus on special films, which are either considered 'lost' or 'missing'.

3:40 Interaction with Sugeeth Krishnamoorthy, filmmaker

4:00 Vote of thanks

Day 2; 7th December 2017 at Advocates Association, Madurai Bench of Madras High Court

5:30 pm Women of Freedom (Dir: Abeer Zeibad Haddad; 57 min; Arabic with Eng subtitles; Documentary; Palestine, Israel)

Women of Freedom follows the stories of women who were murdered in the name of ‘Honor Killing', in the Arab and Palestinian society. This documentary aims to unravel the social and political circumstances that lead to this troubling phenomenon.

6:30 Interaction

6:45 PRINTED RAINBOW (Animation/English/35mm/15min/color/2006/India; Directed, Animated, Produced by Gitanjali Rao)

‘Printed Rainbow’ is a journey of a lonely old woman and her cat into the fantastical world of her matchbox collection.

7:00 Interction

7:15 Survey Number Zero (Dir: Priya Thuvassery; 31 min; Gujarati with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India)

Story of three women from Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat. The Salt they make and a Land which has never been surveyed.

Day 02; 7 Dec 2017 at LENS Media Centre, Gnanaolipuram

4:00 Silence in the Courts (Dir: Prasanna Vithanage; 57 min; Documentary; Sri Lanka)

Two women from rural Sri Lanka, sexually abused by a Judge nearly two decades ago, try in vain to seek justice. As their plea is turned down and subverted by the country’s highest authorities, noted journalist Victor Ivan begins to write in-depth stories highlighting their plight, the state of the justice system and its lack of commitment to the downtrodden – to no avail.

5:00 Interaction

5:15 Delicate Weave (Dir: Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar; 62 min; Kutchi and Hindi with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India)

A Delicate Weave, set in Kachchh, Gujarat, India, traces four different musical journeys, all converging in the ways they affirm religious diversity, syncretism and love of the other. Drawing on the poetic and musical traditions of Sant Kabir and Shah Bhitai, as well as the folk traditions of the region, these remarkable musicians and singers bear testimony to how these oral traditions of compassion are being passed down from one generation to the next.

6:15 Interaction

6:30 Echoes of the Past

Dir: Merajur Rahman Baruah ; 52 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India

Donning a new avatar every day has been a way of life for 60 years old Sikandar Abbas. He was only six-months-old when he had his first performance, as the infant Lord Krishna. A ninth-generation Behrupiya from Rajasthan, the art of impersonation is his greatest inheritance. His ancestors brought comic relief to the humdrum of day-to-day life, even in the Royal courts.

7:25 Interaction

7 Dec; Kaleidoscope

5:00 pm Special Service (Dir: Ujjwal Utkarsh; 18:30 min; English, Hindi, Telugu; Documentary; India)

This piece, special service, revolves around a candle light vigil that was organised in respect of Rohith Vemula in Delhi. Surprisingly, the vigil was also NOT allowed by the state and people at the vigil were detained.

5:20 Interaction

5:30 A Walnut Tree (Dir: Ammar Azis; 92 min; Documentary; Pakistan0

An old man reminisces about a distant homeland. He wants to return. Internally displaced as a result of the ongoing war between the Pakistan army and the Taliban and forced to live in a camp, the family is caught between memories of what life was, an insecure present and a bleak future.

7:00 pm Interaction

19th Madurai Film Festival : Screening Schedule Day 01 - 6 Dec 2017

19th Madurai Film Festival - Screening Schedule : Day 01, 6 Dec 2017

Day 1: 6 December 2017 at Arul Aanandhar College, Karumathur

10 am: Inauguration

Chief Guest: Amrit Gangar, film critic / curator / historian (Mumbai)

10:30 18 Feet (Dir: Renjit Kuzhur; 77 min; Malayalam with English subtitles; Documentary; Indian Films)

Karinthalakoottam is an indigenous band that propagates the music of soul to connect people with a sense of historic resolution. 18 feet symbolizes the holy distance dalits, the downtrodden, were to ensure for the sanctity of upper castes. P R Remesh, a city public-bus conductor, is the man behind the exuberant squad that drums empathy for all in denial of historic untouchability attached to the disused community. The troop is the vanguard in redefining the identity of people who are battered by senseless incorrectness through centuries. The downtown Kerala band rekindles the sense of sanity for all with a massage of love and harmony.

11:50 Interaction

12:00 Printed Rainbow (Dir: Gitanjali Rao; 15 min; Animation; India; Filmmaker in Focus)

‘Printed Rainbow’ is a journey of a lonely old woman and her cat into the fantastical world of her matchbox collection.

12:15 Interaction

12:30 Flesym (Dir: Behrouz Roustaei; 19 min; Parsi with Eng subtitles; Short fiction; Iran)

Behzad is a civil engineer who gets very close to signing an important contract that can change his life. Everything is perfect but Behzad undergoes internal disorders and in the course of the story we realize that he is suffering from phobias which have been with him since childhood.

12:50 Interaction

1:00 Lunch break

2:00 Alpavirama – Students films from Asia: Curated by Arun Gupta, NID (Ahmedabad)

A Political Life (Docu/Award Winner/Myanmar) 20 min

Aina (Fiction/Award Winner/Bangladesh) 19 min

2:40 Interaction

2:50 Green (Dir: Patrick Rouxel; 48 min; Documentary; Retrospective)

Her name is Green; she is alone in a world that doesn’t belong to her. She is a female Orangutan, a victim of deforestation and resource exploitation. This film is an emotional journey with Green’s final days. It is a visual ride presenting the treasures of rainforest biodiversity in Indonesia and the devastating impacts of logging and land clearing for the palm oil plantations and the pulp and paper Industry.

3:40 Interaction

Day 01:6 December at LENS Media Centre, Gnanaolipuram

4:00 Mod (Dir: Pushpa Rawat; 69 min; India; Documentary; Documentary; India)

'Mod' is an attempt by the filmmaker at communicating with the young men who hang out at the ‘notorious’ water tank in her neighbourhood in Pratap Vihar, Ghaziabad.

5:10 Interaction

5:25 Bird Trapper or Beggar

Dir: Vinod Raja; 79 min; Kannada, Waghri Bohli with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India

The Hakki Pikkis are a free spirited nomadic tribe who began their wandering many generations ago in the North Western part of the Indian subcontinent. Over time they travelled through and settled in different states of the country. As they moved, they survived through trapping birds and hunting small game in the forests and selling them in cities and towns along with lucky charms and trinkets. If the trap failed, begging was the next best bet! Exiled from the forest, reviled by the city, their traditional ways of life outlawed the Hakki Pikkis share their stories of wit and survival in the film that emerged through a series of community conversations held when we travelled with friends from a settlement in Bannerghatta, Bangalore to other settlements across Karnataka.

6:45 Interaction with Vinod Raja, filmmaker

7:00 I am Bonnie

Dir: Farha Katun, Satarupa Santra, Saurabh Kanti Dutta; 45 min; Bengali with English subtitles; Documentary; India

Bonnie (33) is again on the run. He has been on the run from his family and sports fraternity since failing 'sex test' before the Bangkok Asian Games, 1998.

7:45 Interaction

6 Dec 2017 at Kaleidoscope, Ayyar Bungalow

5 pm Inauguration

5:30 Filmmaker in Focus – Gitanjali Rao

PRINTED RAINBOW (Animation/English/35mm/15min/color/2006/India; Directed, Animated, Produced by Gitanjali Rao)

‘Printed Rainbow’ is a journey of a lonely old woman and her cat into the fantastical world of her matchbox collection.

ORANGE (Animation/English/4min/color/2002; Directed, Animated, Produced by Gitanjali Rao)

‘Orange’ is a conversation between two women about love and the loss of it

CHAI (11min/color/2014)

CHAI is a short film exploring the lives of four tea sellers in India. Merging the mediums of documentary, fiction and animation, ‘Chai’ is a part of 5 films that describe India.

BLUE (Animation/01 min/color; Director : Gitanjali Rao)
'Blue' is a little girl's dream about exploring space, with her cat. 'Blue' was an exercise in story telling without using words. It was created in the traditional style of progressive animation using colored pencils on colored paper. It was made in the days were computers were not used too widely for animation in India.

6:00 Interaction

6:15 Belonging to Untouchable God (Dir: Anuj Kumar; 26 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India)

Story of Ramkali Devi, a dalit woman from Bihar who once was a bonded labourer, now an independent farmer after a long struggle for justice.

6:45 Interaction

7:00 3 Years 3 Months & 2 Days (Dir : Saeid Valizadeh and Davood Rahmani; 25 min; Parsi with Eng subtitles; Short fiction; Iran)

It is last moments of living a teen being convicted a felony. In fantasy and realism people come and go and he is looking for an answer into which he is forgiven or not?

7:30 Interaction