A bouquet of films from India and neighbouring countries, which hold a mirror to the times we live in, will be screened during a film festival at a south Kolkata auditorium later this month.
The festival will open with A Night of Knowing Nothing by Payal Kapadia, a graduate of Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. The film won the Best Documentary Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. Against the backdrop of the protests at FTII over the appointment of television actor Gajendra Chauhan as chairperson of the institute, the film has a student writing letters to her estranged lover. The letters offer a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her.
The festival will close with a film from Myanmar, which has no credits. The cloak of anonymity will protect the makers, a group of young people from the strife-torn country. The film, titled Journey of a Bird, is a ground report of the atrocities since the junta came to power in a coup.
The ninth edition of Kolkata People’s Film Festival, organised by the People’s Film Collective, will be held at Uttam Mancha from January 20 to 23. The “people-supported, independent, volunteer-led cinema festival” will showcase documentary and fiction cinema from India and south Asia. The films have been divided into long and short documentaries and fiction from India and south Asia. Around 50 films will be shown over four days, the organisers said.
“Since the Narendra Modi regime came to power, the space for independent films is shrinking. Films that talk of oppression and resistance are being shunted, even in the festival circuit. During the UPA government, there was space for showing films critical of the Congress. But the current regime has different ideas. Our festival is an attempt to hold on to that shrinking space,” said Dwaipayan Banerjee, one of the organisers of the festival
. The films from India and neighbouring countries like Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, show that the problems are not isolated and specific to one country alone, said organisers.
One of them, Hurdang, shows a family based in Lucknow. A birthday calls for the preparation of meat, but the birthday boy is caught in a riot. His sister is in a relationship with a Hindu boy, who threatens to throw the meat from the window to attract the rioters. The family has to fight for existence.
Another, In a Dissent Manner, revisits the night of December 15, 2019, at Aligarh Muslim University. The campus became a battleground when police and RAF personnel entered on the pretext of dispersing anti-CAA protestors and inflicted what can only be described as one of the worst cases of police brutality on students.
Siege in the Air is among multiple films from Kashmir to be screened at the festival. It shows women in the Valley weaving memory threads to piece together a narrative of what it feels like to live under perpetual uncertainty and unending cycles of lockdowns with a focus on the communication blockade of 2019, post the abrogation of Article 370.
Among the international entries, Sanam is about an Afghan girl who wants to run away from the Taliban. No Way Out shows the plight of Bangladeshi workers in South Korea.
Like previous editions, entry at the festival will be free for all, said organisers.
“We have been struggling with finances, especially after the pandemic. But we have stayed clear of any institutional funding so far. We remain accountable to none but our audience and fellow film workers,” said Banerjee. The festival will have two keynote speakers. On January 20, Jharkhand based activist and filmmaker Meghnath will speak on KP Sasi, the documentary filmmaker who died last month.
On January 21, rights activist Teesta Setalvad will deliver a talk on “In search of justice in New India”.