Monday, January 31, 2022

10th Chennai Film Festival 2022 : Indian Documentaries - Non Competition

10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2022

16-20 February, multiple venues, Chennai 


Organised by MARUPAKKAM 


Indian Documentaries : Non Competition 


1) Ruuposh

Dir : Mohd Fehmeed, Zeeshan Amir Khan; 32.25 min



Ruuposh is an idiosyncratic documentary that features Ruksana Begum- her late father Mehboob Khan and her son- Mohd Fehmeed, who belong to a Muslim minority family of India 2021. The documentary follows a personal narrative of how Mehboob Khan stayed back in India at the time of partition while his entire extended family moved to Pakistan.


2) Whose Dreams, Whose City?

Dir: Abhishek Parija; 39.58 min




Whose Dreams, Whose City?' is a 2021 Odia Independent documentary that takes a flagship state building called 'Krushi Bhawan (Center for Farmers)' sitting at the heart of Bhubaneswar as its focus. It uses that to explore the aspects of artisanship, agriculture, and public art/architecture in a city, things that the building claims to celebrate.


3) Beyond Blast

Dir: Ratan Saikhom; 52.10 min



'Beyond Blast’ portrays the life of an artist who is a victim of armed conflict in quest for peace.'On 16 December 2007' a powerful IED blast at Pourabi a countryside of Manipur the north eastern state of India which claims 7 lives' with more than 30 injured, among the injured artist Maikel overcomes his suffering and wanted to swiped away the dark and fear psychosis of the people through his painting. 


4) Charaiveti

Dir : Bauddhayan Mukherji, Chandan Biswas; 70.56 min



In February 2017, Chandan Biswas, a resident of Barasat, West Bengal set off on his bicycle on an arduous journey of 153 days, traversing 6249 kms, crisscrossing 4 different countries to become the first man to complete the Trans-Himalayan expedition on a bicycle. 


Armed with a fixed lens go pro camera, Chandan shot this incredible and spectacular journey of his and came back with a footage of over 52 hours. Charaiveti was born out of this very footage.


5) Nokkuvidya - The Story of a Lone String Puppeteer

Dir: Reshmi Radhakrishnan; 37.08 min



Nokkuvidya is a centuries old unique traditional puppetry practiced by Vela community in Kerala which is under the threat of extinction. The documentary is about how timely and sincerely a young girl Renjini could learn the art from her grand mother Moozhkkal Pankajakshi who is the only remaining exponent of Nokkuvidya, just before Pankajakshi lost her memory by Alzheimers.


6) Kathekegala Kanive - The Valley of Stories

Dir : Vikash Badiger; 30 min




Faces of Bengaluru documents the journey of how the trans-artists of Aravani Art Project learn photography and take photos of their closest people and what their connection is to the city of Bangalore.


7) Written in the Corners

Dir : Suyash Kamat; 11 min



Through juxtapositions of memory & nostalgia with modernity & despair, ‘Written in the Corners’ tells the tale of a part of the city of Panjim that is most likely to be forgotten. A city is made up of many other cities. This is the story of one of those many cities. 


8) Padagu

Dir: Sahaya Riju; 28:34 min





Padagu is a documentary about the fishermen of Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the Indian mainland. It looks into the transition of the lives of fishermen of Kanyakumari, from 'kattumaram' to '77 feet long trawler boats’.


9) What’s your story?

Dir : O P Srivatsava; 50.47 min




The film explores the ecosystem of independent cinema in India. It is an Indie about Indie cinema in India. 


10) The Making of She-Devil

Dir: Sourav RoyChowdhury; 45.44 min




Perceptions from a Modern Witch Hunt: The Making of a She-Devil is a social documentary about a Witch Hunt that took place in 2017, in Bardhaman district of West Bengal, India. 



10th Chennai Film Festival 2022 : Indian Documentaries - Competition

10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2022 

Indian Documentaries - Competition 


1) City of Lanes

Dir : Modak KS, Ragini Rao Munjuluri; 39.47 min



The documentary offers a look at the implications of a recent urban development project in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh through the perspectives of the city's residents. The documentary explores themes of citizen-state engagement, governance and development, urban land rights, notions of modernity and socio-cultural dynamics in the city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.


2) Backstage

Dir : Lipika Singh Darai; 85 min



The film portrays the lives and times of puppeteers of Odisha, India. It documents four forms of puppetry; the glove, the string, the rod and the shadow, which are now being performed by their last generation of artists. After them, the art form will probably die. The folk art form, which is as vulnerable as its performers who mostly belong to the lower strata of the society in terms of caste and economy, is experiencing a silent death. The filmmaker builds a personal narrative to trace the time a dying art form is going through.


3) Longing

Dir : Bani Singh; 89.42 min



Against the backdrop of Partition, newly independent India’s first hockey team defeats England, their erstwhile coloniser, to win the Gold at the 1948 London Olympics. 


Six decades later, when Nandy Singh, a member of this iconic team suffers a stroke at the age of 84, his tenacious will to recover inspires his daughter to go on a journey to discover the champion he was before she was born. 



4) Moon on the Man

Dir: Prince Shah; 75 min



Moon on the Man is an observational and exploratory feature length documentary, that questions the most basic questions of reality, perception and choices. As such, it is synonymous with every individual’s struggle to find direction, some that bear an identity through the afflux of time in the ever-evolving landscape of human perspectives and also focuses on mental illness, old age and broken dreams


5) Moving Upstream : Ganga

Dir : Sridhar Sudhir; 105 min




The 'Moving Upstream: Ganga’ documentary was filmed over 6 months on a 3000km walk along River Ganga in India. This documentary explores the idea of walking, people’s responses to a walking traveler in this fast paced era and an evolving relationship with the natural world. It does this while also amplifying the voices and concerns of the riparian community. 


6) Meraki

Dir : Nikhil S; 8.20



Meraki is a journey that translates tranquillity through the lens of a woman, whose way of practicing life encompasses creativity, love and happiness despite her ostensible limitations.


7) Footloose a story of belonging

Dir : Gulshan Singh; 93.38 min



Minorities from Pakistan & Myanmar came to India to save their lives. They had heard that Indian is a secular country where there is no religious discrimination. But, in the last few years, religious discrimination has increased leading to communal riots which ultimately ended up being the sole agenda for contesting elections.


8) Bid for Bengal

Dir : Dwaipayan Banerjee and Kasturi Basu; 70.30 min



How did Hindu-nationalist politics find a foothold in West Bengal after all these decades? Using fresh and archival footage with personal family history, 'A Bid for Bengal' lays bare historical fault lines and visits the workings of frontal organisations in the Hindu-nationalist network responsible for the recent political shift in West Bengal, in between witnessing two consecutive elections trails, from 2019 to 2021. As resistance takes shape, one arrives at the immediate present marred with anxiety, yet not bereft of hope.

9) Keemat Chukati Zeendagi
Dir : Shriprakash; 86 min

Driven by his quest for truth, a poet and people's leader rises against the power structure that is complex and layered, and with it ignites the spark of dignity and dissent among the people facing atrocities of the power.

The poet and people's leader- Mahendra Singh- is eventually murdered in 2005.

This film unearths the life of Com. Mahendra Singh and the subversive life ethos through two set of filmmakers, shot over 13 years, both investigating the truth of the man and the mass, who fought a brave but unequal war against the power structure.


10) Once Upon a Village

Dir : Srishti Lakhera; 60:14 min



In the Himalayan foothills, an 80- year- old woman and a 19-year-old girl are two of the seven remaining inhabitants of an abandoned village. The two women struggle with the choice to leave for an alienating city life or continue living in a lonely village.

Sunday, January 30, 2022

10th Chennai Film Festival 2022 : Selection Committee and Final Jury

10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2022 

16-20 February, multiple venues, Chennai 

Organised by MARUPAKKAM

Selection Committee 

Documentaries : Sehjo Singh, Meera Chaudhary, Sabyasachi Banerjee

Short Fiction : Louis Mathew, Pratap Joseph, Dhamayanthi 

Final Jury for competition 

Documentaries : Swarnavel Easwaran, Smriti Nivetia, Fathima Nizarudeen 

Short Fiction : Arun Gupta, Suma Jasson, Santhosh Ram 




10th Chennai Film Festival 2022 : Retrospective - Ramachandra PN

10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2022

21-27 February, multiple venues, Chennai 

Organised by MARUPAKKAM

Retrospective : Ramachandra PN


Graduated from the ‘Screenplay Writing & Direction’ discipline from the FTII in 1991, Mumbai based Ramchandra PN is a Bachelor of Commerce from Mangalore University. Over the past 30 years he has been making documentaries, features, short films and TV programs. His documentaries have been screened in various national and international film festivals, like The Mumbai International Short and Documentary Film Festival, The International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, The Kolkata International Film Festival, MAMI Film Festival, Mumbai, The Madhurai Documentary Film Festival, Delhi International Film Festival, Prague Indian Film Festival, Abuja International Film Festival, Nigeria etc.

He has also worked in fiction and Nonfiction TV programs like Surabhi India Anjana and Swara Sadhana, Tele Tubbies, Chahcha Chaudary etc.. 

His activities in Cinema Academics includes conducting workshops and short courses,  and mentoring young students in various institutions like FTII, SRFTII, Whistling Woods,  LV Prasad Film Institute, Central University of Hyderabad, Mangalore  and Kuvempu University, Karnataka, Lohit Libraries, Wakro Arunachal Pradesh etc..

His first fiction feature Suddha (The Cleansing Rites) won him the Best Indian Film at the Osian Cinefan Festival of Asian Films, New Delhi Indian 2006. His Putaani Party (The Kid Gang) won the Best Children’s film at the Indian National Film Awards, 2009.

Apart from writing on Cinema, he has also served as a Jury member at the Kashish Film Festival, Mumbai and the Orange International Film Festival, Kerala. Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentaries and Short Films, International Film Festival of Kerala and The Dusserra International Film Festival of Mysore, are some of the Festivals in which he was involved in the pre-selection committee. Besides, his expertise has also been used in the script committees of NFDC, CFSI, the Rough Cut committee in Films Division; as well as the selection committee for commissioning of documentaries in Films Division and the Himachal Pradesh Government.

List of films to be shown: 

1) Voices of Mini Tibet
10 Minutes / Hindi-English / EST / Documentary / 2000
Producer: Films Division
Script and Direction: Ramachandra PN
Cinematography - Shivaji Mane
Sound - H. S. Neelakanta
Editing – Sanjay Jadhav 


Synopsis: Nirvana a spiritual liberation is the core of any form of Buddhism, but to the refugees in the many Tibet are settlement colonies in India such spiritual liberation is closely associated with their political liberation. This film zeroes in at one such colony in Mungod, Karnataka.

2) Makkala Panchayat (Children’s Panchayat)
30 Mins / Kannada / EST / Documentary / 2007

Producers: UNDP
Script, Direction and Editing: Ramchandra PN
Camera: Sameer Mahajan
Sound: Santosh Kumar



Synopsis: In Coastal Karnataka, in South India, 56 Gram Panchayat’s (Village Self Governing Bodies) hold elections to the Makkala Panchavat (Children’s Self Governing Bodies), so that the children can from a pressure group to help solve developmental issues that they think are important to them and to their villages.

3) Gudigeri Company
24 minutes / Documentary / Kannada / EST / India / 2011
Director / Editor / Cameraman: Ramchandra PN 


Synopsis: A popular professional theater troupe arrives at a busy fair in North Karnataka, South India only to find that its audience base is dwindling.

4) Miyar Mané (Miyar House)
76 minutes / Kannada / EST/ Documentary / 2011
Producer: Sonk Films
Camera: Ajay Raina
Sound Design: Santosh Kumar
Direction & Editing: Ramchandra PN


Film Festivals: International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala; Prague Indian Film Festival, Czech Republic; Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI); Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary and Shorts (MIFF)

Synopsis: The filmmaker’s 200-year-old ancestral house in a remote village of Miyar in Karnataka is being dismantled, giving him an opportunity to undertake a journey into a past that he shares not only with his extended family but also with successive generations of rural Indians. A realisation of the inevitability of a transition marks this journey, which could well be the journey of a country that has propelled itself into modernity. As plans are on for the house to be reconstructed in an open-air museum, divorced from its original context, the fossilization seems to be complete.

5) The Unbearable Being of Lightness
45 minutes / Hindi-English / EST / Documentary / 2016
Producer: Sonk Films
Camera, Editing and Direction: Ramchandra P N


Film Festival: Kolkata International Film Festival; Signs Film Festival, Kerala; Social Justice Film Festival, Chennai; Regional International Film Festival of Kerala, Film South Asia, Nepal; Social Movements, Protest & Dissent in India series, Cambridge University, UK

Synopsis: The filmmaker goes to the University of Hyderabad to conduct a film related workshop where the students have to observe and write a structured report using the sight and sounds of a crowded place. The place selected is a shopping area at the University called the Shopcom, which was the epicenter of the struggle for social justice launched immediately after the death of a research scholar Rohit Vemula.

6) An Autobiography of a Project Report
44 mins / Kannada / EST / Documentary / India 2021

Producer: Sonk Films
Writer, Director, Camera: Ramchandra PN


Synopsis: A retired Government technocrat passionately remembers his environment destroying pet projects that he had painstakingly worked out and proposed to the Government of Karnataka that aims to divert a portion of the water of the west flowing rivers of the state into the deep east, where it will be used for drinking purposes and to recharge ground water levels.


Tuesday, January 18, 2022

10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2022 : Selected Documentaries

10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2022

16-20 Feb, multiple venues, Chennai 

Organised by MARUPAKKAM 

Selected Documentaries 

Following films have been shortlisted and recommended by the official Selection Committee of 10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival.

Committee Members : Sehjo Singh, Meera Chaudhary and Sabyasachi Banerjee 

Indian films : Competition 

City of Lanes

Backstage

Longing

Moon on the Man

Moving Upstream Ganga

Meraki

Footloose

Bid for Bengal

Keemat Chukati Zindagi 

Once upon a Village

Indian films : Non competition 

Ruuposh

Whose Dreams

Written in the Corners

Padagu

The Valley of Stories

Beyond Blast

Charaiveti

What's Your Story?

Nokkuvidya - The story of a lone string puppetter 

Perceptions from a Modern Witch Hunt

International films : Non competition 

Incomplete Sentences

Emergence : Out of the Shadows

Ushiku 

If we told the truth

Dajla : cinema and oblivion 

The Last Man

Kalashnikov Society 

Genocide and Movements

Nasima

What you are going through

Land of Women 






Sunday, January 16, 2022

10th Chennai Film Festival 2022 : Selected Short Fiction

10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2022

16-20 Feb, multiple venues, Chennai 

Organised by MARUPAKKAM 


Selected Short fiction films

The official selection committee comprising 

Louis Mathew, Pratap Joseph and Dhamayanthi has given the following recommendations.

1) Indian films : Competition 

Crescent

Chhoti Si Batt

Chhaya

Kulup

Around

All is Lost

The Case

The Unowned House

Inside


2) Indian films : Non competition 

Closer

The Roka

The Conclusion 

Manoeuvre 

Ladybird

Aalo

Tipping Point




3) International films : Non competition 

The Third Solar Term
Summer Time - Summer Time
A Firecracker's Story
Baptism
Yesterday I was the Moon
Poster
Storegetniya 


More details soon!


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