We are super excited to bring you the 5th Indian Documentary Film Festival Bhubaneswar. It will be organized from 26th to 29th September at the Odissi Research Centre, XIMB Square.The festival line up will focus on contemporary documentary films from across the country. It will have a retrospective on the documentary films of Manipuri filmmaker Haobam Paban Kumar. Filmmakers from different parts of India will grace the festival with their presence and interact with the people of the city.
The festival poster is based on a poem called 'The Second Olive Tree' by Mahmoud Darwish.
MEET THE DIRECTORS AT IDFFB 2019
Goutam Ghose (also credited as Gautam Ghosh) (born 24 July 1950) is an acclaimed Indian film director, music director and cinematographer, who works primarily in Bengali cinema.He started making documentaries in 1973. Took active part in group theatre movement in Calcutta. Also dedicated some time as a Photo Journalist. Made his first documentary– New Earth in 1973 followed by Hungry Autumn. Since then, he has made a number of feature films and documentaries.
Stanzin Dorjai Gya, a filmmaker living in Ladakh, India, is dedicated to sharing stories that open the viewers’ eyes and minds to the unique challenges of life in the High Himalayas. His subjects are as compelling as the landscape. His message is as profound as the surrounding mountaintops.My goal as a filmmaker and in life is to contribute to the positive development of Ladakh. And to help others create their own cinematic visions here in this beautiful and unique part of the the world that I am proud to call my home. — Stanzin Dorjai GyaThe founder of the Himalayan Film House in Leh, Stanzin has directed and produced notable feature films and documentaries on regional, national and international issues.
FILM LINE UP AT IDFFB 2019
A Journey of Passion
By Bijaya Kumar Nishanka
2018, 52min, Odia
A Journey of Passion tells the tale of Tanmayjt who is in search of his grandfather’s works to build a personal archive, a journey that reveals to him the key role his grandfather played in the making of the Odia film industry.
Daughter of Nepa
Directed by Surbhi Dewan
2018, 35min, Nepali/English
Daughter of Nepal is a poetic look at a rarely seen side of a revolutionary movement. It is the story of Manushi Yami Bhattarai, the unassuming daughter of two formidable political leaders of Nepal. As her parents prepared to go underground for the Peoples’ War in the mid-1990, nine-year-old Manushi was sent across the border to live under an assumed identity.
Rediscovering Jajam
Directed by Avinash Maurya and Kriti Gupta
2018, 26 mint, Hindi
As public spaces are going missing in the face of rapid urbanization, Indian craftsmen share their stories of Jajam, a large traditional textile that was a gathering space for people in the villages of Rajasthan. Rediscovering Jajam is about how Jajam’s presence has featured in peoples’ lives, their experiences of it, beliefs and so on.
Neeli Raag (True Blue)
Directed by Swati Dandekar
2018, 85min, Hindi
Neeli Raag begins with the history of indigo, which is not simply the rise and fall of a natural dye. The tradition of making indigo has survived 4,000 years, witnessing Indo-European trade disputes, British colonialism, Mahatma Gandhi-led protests against the crop, and ultimately a modern India where the colour is in vogue but with not enough craftsmen to meet the demand. Dandekar celebrates this vast history by highlighting the onerous process and hard work that goes behind the making of this dye.
Every Time You Tell a Story
Directed by Ruchika Negi and Amit Mahanti
52 mints, English and Nagamese
This film offers an interpretation of history, a way of understanding the shifts that Tsungkotepsu shawl painting tradition has experienced when confronted with the certitudes of history-colonialism, new religion and assimilation in the Indian state. Through histories that have written themselves onto its fabric, how does the story continue to resonate today?
Legacy of a Painter
Directed by Nutan Manmohan
2018, 25 min, English
Jangarh Singh Shyam was a genius artist, belonging to the Gond pradhan tribe of storytellers from central India. Since his first appearance at the Pompidou Museum in Paris – his work has created a big buzz across art galleries all over the world. Jangarh experiments with different mediums – from simple ink drawings to ambitious large scale murals on iconic buildings. This documentary looks at the artist’s journey.
Tides of Life
Directed by Suhel Banerjee
2018, 52min, Bengali/English
Tides of Life revolves around a film crew travelling to the Sundarbans in West Bengal in India looking for the elusive Bengal tiger. It looks at how over the course of their journey, through a landscape of labyrinth like tidal mangroves, they are confronted by various questions instead of the answers they were looking for.
River Story
Directed by Yapangnaro Lingkumer
2018, 6 min, Nagamese
Set in Nagaland, the film tries to find resonance in other geo-political locations of the world where the people living in the margins challenged by the seemingly inevitable phenomenon of modernization. The film follows Zarenthung, a first generation fisherman as he navigates his new profession as the reality around him is changing.
Moti Bagh
Directed by Nirmal Chander Dandriyal
2019, 60min, Hindi
Moti Bagh sees an 83 year old farmer-poet, in a remote Himalayan village in India, struggling to keep his farm alive in the face of rampant migration
Telltales of the Hills
Directed by Georgy Abraham
2018, 18 minutes, Malayalam
The History of Munnar shifted drastically from 19th century, with the rise of tea plantation culture. When the Whites cleared the forest, the wild animals and the Muduvans, the early inhabitants of Munnar region, were displaced. They hired men to enslave Tamilians from distant lands to work for them, and they built an empire which made them the best exporters of the Tea. Through the telltales of those who count Munnar as their home, viewers may decide whether the exploitation which they began centuries ago are still continuing on various levels.
Baba Farid : Poet of the Soul
Directed by Meera Dewan
2018, 63min, Punjabi
Baba Farid: Poet of The Soul is a cinematic journey on a 12th century Poet who is revered by both Sikhs and Sufis. The film unravels the geographical, historical and poetic milestones in the journey of Fariduddin Maud, the country poet addressed as Baba Farid by his followers.
We Have Not Come Here to Die
Directed by Deepa Dhanraj
2018, 100 minutes, Telegu/English
On January 17th 2016 a Dalit, PhD research scholar, and activist Rohith Vemula unable to bear the persecution from a partisan University administration and dominant caste Hindu supremacists hung himself in one of the most prestigious universities in India. His suicide note, which argued against the “value of a man being reduced to his immediate identity” galvanized student politics in India. Over the last year thousands of students all over the country have broken the silence around their experiences of caste discrimination in Universities and have started a powerful anti-caste movement. The film attempts to track this historic movement that is changing the conversation on caste in India.
Achoubi In Love
Directed by Meena Devi Longjam
2018, 30min, Manipuri
The documentary tells the story of an impeccable effort on the part of Achoubi, a widow who reinvents a solution to protect indigenous Manipuri ponies, which is rooted in self-evolved principles of inclusivity and sensitive existence.
Coral Woman
Directed by Priya Thuvassey
2019, 52min, English/Tamil
Coral Woman revolves around Uma, a 53 year old scuba diver. The film is about how the presence and the reality of the coral reefs of the Gulf of Mannar inspired a homemaker in her 50s, to learn to swim, dive and paint, in order to garner attention to an alarming environmental issue.
LONGRA
Directed by Sankhajit Biswas
2019, 27min, English
LONGRA ‘Jhum’ or Shifting cultivation is an age-old farming practice prevalent amongst the indigenous tribes of Northeast India. Jhum being an integral part of the Naga way of life, any effort to discourage Jhum has been more or less futile. In 2010, Longra a small yet progressive village of the Chang tribe, decided to walk a different path. Longra is a visual exercise in the tracing of that path.
HAVE YOU SEEN ARANA?
Directed by Sunanda Bhatt
73 minutes, Malayalam
The film explores the effects of a rapidly changing landscape on people’s lives and livelihoods. A woman’s concern over the disappearance of medicinal plants from the forest, a farmer’s commitment to growing traditional varieties of rice organically and a cash crop cultivator’s struggle to survive amidst
farmers’ suicides, offer fresh insights into shifting relations between people, knowledge systems and
environment. As hills flatten, forests disappear and traditional knowledge systems are forgotten, the film reminds us that
this diversity could disappear forever, to be replaced by monotonous and Unsustainable alternatives.
Meeting a Milestone
Directed by Gautam Ghosh
1989, 90 minutes, Hindi
The film brilliantly captures the magic of Ustad Bismillah Khan's music: the shenai, Bismillah Khan the man himself and his hometown, Benaras. We learn how Bismillah Khan gradually evolved from a 14-year-old boy accompanying his Mamu (uncle) and guru Ali Baksh Khan at a concert in Allahabad to become, in course of time, one of India's all time greats. The movie, replete with gripping incidents and anecdotes and stunning visuals of Beneras, is a rare glimpse of a legend that Ustad Bismillah Khan is.
Janani's Juliet
Directed by Pankaj Rishi Kumar
2019, 53min, Tamil/English
Deeply disturbed by a spate of honour killings in India this documentary sees Indianostrum, a Pondicherry based theatre group, setting out to introspect the implications of caste, class and gender through an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. What emerges in the process is a critical reflection and commentary on the contemporary world, where love struggles to survive.
Kaifiyat
Directed by Elroy Pinto
2018, 46min, Urdu/Hindi
Kaifiyat looks at the syncretic nature of the tabla, a musical instrument, and the playing style of Ustad Nizamuddin Khan (d.2000). The tabla, much like Nizamuddin’s style, developed in the courts of Indo-Islamic rulers of India. The film intersperses fiction and non-fiction to set-up a narrative and leans on a narrator to further strengthen it.
In search of Aseemun
Directed by Taran Khan
2011, 45 minutes, Hindi/ Urdu
The filmmaker and her grandfather are on a journey across Awadh, looking for traces of the world that shaped the music of Aseemun, a gifted but obscure folk singer who was part of both their lives. Using old photographs, home video and extensive music, the film travels, literally and otherwise, into a way of life that assimilated the best of Hindu and Muslim cultures.
Lines of Control
Directed by Raja Shabir Khan
2018, 52min, Hindi/Kashmiri
Keran is a village situated on the Indian side of the LoC. With the onset of militancy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the early nineties, around 90 percent of people are known to have fled from Keran and crossed over to the other side. The erstwhile closely knit families now lay split across the line of control. The film revolves around Ashraf Joo and his struggle, to procure the necessary travel documents, to be able to visit his family on the other side.
Growing up in Ladakh
Directors: Stanzin Dorjai Gya and Christiane Mordelet
2017, 26 minute, India/France
Padma, 12, divides her time between school and home, where she helps her family with daily work. Her life is very different from that of a small European: she lives in Ladakh, a region of northern India, in the remote village of Gya, perched at 4,300 meters above sea level. To go to school, Padma has to travel 72 kilometers by bus! She and her sister Kaskeet attend a boarding school, where they sometimes stay more than two months before returning to their families.
Maida
Directed by Lubna Yusuf
2019, 20min, Hindi
Maida filmed across a span of eight years, traces the dreams and aspirations of a young school girl living in a regressive village in Bihar. Through the medium of stories and Bhojpuri folk songs, the documentary punctures the myth of women empowerment as we know it.
Agar woh Desh Banati
Directed by Maheen Mirza
2018, 60min, Hindi
Agar Woh Desh Banati voices out the concerns of rural Adivasi women, from the villages of Raigarh in Chhattisgarh, on issues of land-grab, displacement and increasing ecological degradation. All of which has been happening under the pretence of development of the country. The pertinent question their voices and position poses for our times is, “What does development really mean?
Songs of our soil
Directed by Aditi Maddali
52 minutes, Telugu with English subtitles
Uyyala songs are an agricultural tradition rooted in the political expression of women in Telangana. Through these oral traditions, Songs of our Soil traces the histories of their resistance and memories of disillusionment. By looking at women’s participation in major political movements, from the Telangana People’s Movement to the demands of justice from the contemporary Mallana Sagar Irrigation project, this film attempts to complicate the relationship between memory, history and cultural production.
This project is made possible with a grant from India Foundation for the Arts under the Arts Research programme, with support from Titan Company Ltd.
Exhibit A
Directed by Madhuvanti Maddar
2019, 18 minutes, Hindi/ English
Exhibit – A is a documentary film about a polyamorous couple and their cat, living in a metropolis in India. In a heteronormative society that prefers to operate in binaries, the film hopes to represent an alternative-counter narrative alongside predefined ideas of what a ‘relationship’ should be.
Chai Darbari
Directed by Prateek Shekhar
2018, 29min, Hindi
A pursuit of truth invariably comes into conversations echoing print, electronic and social media dialogues, conversations evocative of the lived contexts of a city. Inspired by real-life conversations, the film presents a range of perceptions and recollections in a conversational format.
Memoirs of Saira & Salim
Directed by Eshwarya Grover
2018, 15 minutes, Hindi and Gujarati
Memoirs of Saira & Salim follow Saira and Salim, who are revisiting the burned down house their family was forced to abandon during the 2002 communal riots in India, which inevitably becomes a walk down memory lane for the two.
Dariya Hase Dongravar
Directed by Robin Joy
2018, 20min, Marathi
The film looks at the transitioning lives of fishermen of Valmiki Nagar Koliwada, Harihareshwar, affected by the arrival of the monsoon rain. It tries to look at how the life of the Koli community is intricately woven into the nature that envelopes them.
Nodir Kul Nai
Directed by Parasher Baruah
2019, 18 minutes, Bengali & Assamese
Nodir Kul Nai features the inhabitants of the Chars- sandbanks of the river Brahmaputra. It explores their relationship with the river, their struggle for survival and the larger issues of migration and questions of identity that are constantly looming over them.
