This time around, the festival, which began in 2005 and is now held annually around International Women’s Day, has 35 films from 13 countries, apart from a special section of 11 films from Palestine under ‘Voices of Palestine’
“An interesting aspect of the film festival is an audio segment called ‘soundphiles’. This is the third year we are showcasing this segment where artists send in their sound entries. This year we have a total of 8 sound works,” says Uma Tanuku, Festival Director.
Tanuku has curated the festival along with Aradhna Kohli.
Twenty four filmmakers and sound artists are scheduled to take part in the three-day event where films from Bangladesh, Iran, Israel, Japan, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK, Vietnam apart from those from India and Palestine will be screened.
Historical perspective
To bring a historical perspective to the films, a short seminar on documenting the women’s movement in cinema will present films that were inspired by the women’s movements in the 80s and 90s.
“We have films on issues like Sati, the anti-arrack movement and others that were in focus during movements in the 80s and the 90s. Film director Deepa Dhanraj, artist Sheeba Chachi, Shaba Diwan and student Pallavi Kaul will participate in the seminar,” says Tanuku. The seminar has been conceived by feminist scholar Uma Chakravarti and Shikha Jhingan.
According to the festival director, documenting the women’s movement around three decades ago was formidable experience in the absence of easier recording technologies like today’s cell phones.
Another segment of the festival includes a seminar on Conflict, Gender and Media with interesting panel discussions on living and reporting from conflict areas.
“We have looked at conflict regions such as the North East, Kashmir and Palestine and included works from these areas,” says Tanuku.
Exhibitions
The festival also provides a platform for showcasing art, and invites artists to host exhibitions. This year Nagaland artist Iris Odyuo is displaying a selection of 10 paintings that explores the issue of conflict, under the title ’Healings’
The International Association of Women in Radio and Television is a women’s organisation involved in the broadcasting industry was founded in 1949 and has various international chapters.
“The India chapter was founded by Jai Chandiram who was a pioneering woman in the broadcast field and the former deputy director general of Doordarshan. She was a great influence on this film festival which started as a one day festival under the India International Centre’s Asia Project,” says Tanuku.
Asian focus
While previous editions of the IAWRT festivals have had country focus’ where films from countries like Iran, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Mayanmar this year the focus has been on the entire Asian region.
“We also thought that we should look at issues from Palestine and reacquaint ourselves with the region. We have young filmmakers from Palestine who are showcasing their films at a festival for the first time. Apart from this we have three filmmakers from Myanmar,” says the festival director.
Films selected for screening were chosen by a team of curators after calling for entries.
The festival has also travelled to many Indian cities and selections have been screened at other festivals like Birds Eye View Film Festival 2011, London, the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala 2011 and the Vasakh Festival, Lahore 2012.
“This year we received too many films all of them we cannot screen at the festival. We will take the remaining films to various school and university campuses,” says Tanuku.
Campuses in Pune, Mumbai and Thrissur apart from screenings at the Shiv Nadar University, the School of Planning and Architecture and the South Asian University have been planned.