9th Chennai Film Festival 2021 : Highlight # 2

9th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2021

3-7 March; multiple venues, Chennai

Highlight # 2

Retrospective : Nishtha Jain

Nishtha Jain is an internationally-recognized filmmaker based in Mumbai best known for Gulabi Gang (2012), Lakshmi and Me (2007) and City of Photos (2004). Her films interrogate lived experience at the intersection of gender, caste and class. They explore the political in the personal and uncover the mechanisms of privilege.

She’s a Chicken & Egg Award winner (2020); Member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences (AMPAS); Film Independent Global Media Maker Fellow (2019-20); Recipient of Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship (2019).

​After postgraduate training at Jamia Mass Communication Research Centre, New Delhi, she pursued Film Direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune prior to launching a career in independent cinema.

​She’s been working across various platforms –documentary, narrative, virtual reality and TV series. Her films have been widely screened at film festivals and art-house cinemas and broadcast on TV. They have won over 25 international awards and have been reviewed by print-media and academic journals.
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Jain has served as a juror at IDFA, ZFF, Cinema Verité and IDSFFK. She’s given lectures and master classes at numerous universities internationally, including Stanford, NYU, Wellesley College, UCSB, Northwestern University, UT Austin, Cambridge University, University of London, St. Andrews University, Heidelberg, Danish Film School, FTII Pune, India, Satyajit Ray Film & TV Institute.

Films to be shown:

1) City of Photos

2) Lakshmi and Me 

3) At My Doorstep 

4) Gulabi Gang

5) Proof 

There will be an online interaction with the filmmaker during the film festival.