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IDFFB

After a pandemic induced hiatus, the Film Society of Bhubaneswar announces the 3rd Indian Documentary Film Festival of Bhubaneswar (IDFFB).
The festival runs from 14th to 16th October, at the Odissi Research Centre (ORC) auditorium. The focus of the festival is to showcase the contemporary documentary form. The films at the festival comes from diverse regions of the country - exploring issues of migration, gender, uneven development, issues of geo-politics, environmental degradation, political & ethical questions.
The film society draws its energy from the volunteers who make the festival possible.
Come and Volunteer, we also have internship opportunities with us.

Schedule

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Mizo Soundscapes

Joshy Joseph

English

22

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2022

Mizo Soundscapes is a visual - visceral -aural journey through a phase in Mizo History.

City Girls

Priya Thuvassery

Hindi

28

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2021

City Girls' is an intimate portrayal of two young girls from small towns of India now living in Delhi. The film attempts to deconstruct the image of ‘the city’ and what it means for a young woman brought up in an 'elsewhere' she's longed to escape from all her life.

Salt & Sugar

JJ Abraham

English

22

|

2022

Salt and Sugar begins with a memory. A comment from her mother about her dark skin reveals to Hema the impossible gap between who she is and who society demands her to be. This intimate story speaks of the complexities of Indian culture, through classical Indian dance, contemporary movement and spoken word.

Gosain: The Colours of Spring

Bishal Swargiary

Kochari

28

|

2022

The significance and traditions surrounding the Doul Purnima (Holi Festival), as well as the mythology of the discovery Narasimha Gosain by the Banka Kachari while excavating a pond serve as the foundation for this ethnographic film.

Armature

Joshua Quadros

Hindi/Urdu

28

|

2022

Armature is a documentary about a Jiu-Jitsu athlete and his journey to making his amateur MMA debut.

In a Dissent Manner

Ehraz A Zaman

Hindi

62

|

2022

The campus of Aligarh Muslim University became a battleground on 15th December, 2019 when police and RAF forces entered the campus on the pretext of dispersing protestors, and inflicted, what can only be described as one of the worst cases of police brutality on the students. 'In A Dissent Manner' explores the events of that one single night and its horrific after-effects on many students.

Bela

Prantik Basu

Bangla

59

|

2021

In Bela (an indigenous village in eastern India), the men practice a traditional masked folk dance known as the Chhau, while the women frequent the nearby forest to gather dry leaves and firewood. In the local language, Bela means time. Shot over two years and edited as two consecutive days, the film is an intimate observation of the rhythms and rituals of art and labour, the feminine and the masculine, and the ambiguous thresholds between them.

Sindhusthan

Sapna Moti Bhavnani

Sindhi/English

64

|

2019

The documentary includes many stories of the largest migration a culture in history – the Sindhi migration, some from India and some from Sindh (now in Pakistan) along with the director’s, illustrating her journey on her skin.

Bid for Bengal

Kasturi Basu and Dwaipayan Banerjee

Bangla

70

|

2021

Using fresh and archival footage with personal family history, 'A Bid for Bengal' lays bare historical fault lines and visits the workings of frontal organizations in the Hindu-nationalist network responsible for the recent political shift in West Bengal, in between witnessing two consecutive elections trials, from 2019 to 2021.

All that breathes

Shounak Sen

Hindi

91

|

2022

All That Breathes, follows two brothers who run a bird hospital dedicated to rescuing injured black kites, a staple in the skies of New Delhi, India. As environmental toxicity and civil unrest escalate, the relationship between this family and the neglected kites forms a poetic chronicle of the city’s collapsing ecology and deepening social fault lines.

Hatibondhu

Kripal Kalita

Axomiya

53

|

2021

Hati Bondhu (friends of elephants), a voluntary organisation working for elephant welfare in the districts of Nowgaon & Golaghat districts of Assam. Wild elephant habitats are under stress due to developmental pressures. Hati Bondhu's intervention has resulted in reduced human-pachyderm conflicts.

Ghar Ka Pata

Madhulika Jalali

Kashmiri/English

67

|

2020

The film attempts to weave a narrative of the place and of time gone by, juxtaposing a string of short conversations, filmed impromptu through the streets of 'Rainawari', (a quaint suburb of Srinagar where the director's home used to be), with a series of anecdotal experiences with Jalali's family when her father took us back to Kashmir 24 years after they had to leave the valley of mist.

Xenophobia

Monjul Baruah

Axomiya

22

|

2022

The film is based on the much-reported story of 65-year-old Dulal Paul, who was declared a foreigner by a tribunal in 2017 and died while he was lodged in a detention camp.

Buwati Nodir Dore

Neelansh Mittra

Axomiya

29

|

2022

The film shows the rapid cultural transformation in the Sonowal Kachari tribe after the recent exposure to the internet. It captures how The traditional folk songs of the tribe are being remixed in a modern way in recording studios in the city leaving the members of the Kachari tribe in the village, worried about the future of their cultural identity.

Small time Cinema

Priya naresh

Axomiya/Hazaragi

30

|

2022

Small-Time Cinema is a documentary that follows two Youtube filmmaking groups, one living in Balochistan, Pakistan, and one, in Assam, India. The film follows these groups, as they make space for their complex history and cultures, beyond a blanket ‘Indian or Pakistani identity’ only.

Backstage

Lipika Darai

Odia

85

|

2021

The film portrays the lives and times of the puppeteers of Odisha, India. The folk art form, which is as vulnerable as its performers, mostly belonging to the lower strata of society in terms of caste and economy, is experiencing a silent death as only the last generation of practitioners are remaining. The filmmaker builds a personal narrative to trace the time a dying art form is going through.

Gay India Matrimony

Debalina Majumdar

Bangla

67

|

2020

This film revolves around three characters who are out exploring their same-gender marriage prospects with one of them documenting their travails. Shot over five years, this documentary captures the watershed moment of reading down Section 377.

Once Upon a Sky

Barnali Ray Shukla

English/Hindi

72

|

2020

The film follows the story of an Indian paraglider, Gurpreet Dhindsa and gazes upon this man’s total commitment to flying and engages with the idea that adventure sports are closest to being most alive and we know that best when we come to injuries. Injuries are variable here, some are fears, most are obstacles and finally of course the ones which are external, which reveal as the film unfolds.

Colours of Life

Praveen Morchale

Ladakhi/Hindi

61

|

2022

The Director revisits the Himalayan mountain villages after 5 years of shooting a national award-winning feature film "Walking With The Wind" in which local villagers appeared. He meets and observes villagers' life, philosophy, and ideas and invites them for a cinema experience, which some of them had for the first time.

It was in Spring

Dr Kanika Gupta

English

30

|

2021

A devastating change is becoming a trend, that of compromising all trees, plantation and garden spaces in exchange for multi-storey houses, which don't seem to need a garden anymore. This film is the story of one such house, which is destined to lose all its green cover and make way for cement and concrete.

New Classroom

Debankon Singh

Bangla/English

28

|

2022

In the capital city of India, a young boy navigates virtual schooling at home, while the pandemic ravages the country. The imagination of the outside world slowly builds within these four walls; sometimes when a relative calls to inform the death of a loved one, sometimes watching a bird soaring in the sky.

Dukhu Majhi

Somnath Mondal

Bangla

28

|

2022

This documentary is about an old man named 'Dukhu Majhi', who lives with his family in a remote village at the foothill of the Ayodhya , about 350 km from Kolkata (India).

Cham

Abhijit Das

Monpa

40

|

2022

Two parallel narratives are drawn from the lives of Lamas (Monks) of the Tawang Monastery and of the villagers living in the Mon region. This film is a visual installation of images through which it tries to narrate their life, spiritual journey and understanding of life philosophy. The film has plays and dances (pantomime) performed in the Torgya festival transiting through the dance rehearsals and secret and sacred preparations.

Siege in the Air

Muntaha Amin

Kashmiri/English

30

|

2022

This film lays focus on the recent communication blockade of 2019, post the Article 370 abrogation and what its impact was on mental health, mobility, education and desires of young women living there.

Wittgenstein Plays Chess With Duchamp:
Or How Not To Do Philosophy

Amit Dutta

English

17

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2020

The project attempts to push the boundaries of cinema by juxtaposing it with ideas from philosophy, visual art, chess, mathematics, geometry, linguistics and psychology.

Hridoy Basat

Sankhajit Biswas

Bangla

62

|

2021

An intimate portrayal of Suvana Sudeb, a transgender person, who undergoes Gender Affirmative Surgery in order to negotiate the conflict of body and mind.

Not Just Roads

Nitin Bathla

Hindi

70

|

2021

This film captures the story of a highway outside Delhi, from the perspective of human and non-human actors. It depicts a massive urban transformation underway in India.

Trans Kashmir

Surbhi Dewan and S.A. Hanan

Kashmiri

62

|

2022

TRANS KASHMIR is a film about the extreme hardships, resilience and beauty of Kashmir’s transgender community and their growing movement for basic human rights.

Special Focus

Testimony of Ana

Sachin Dheeraj Munigonda

Dangi

24

|

2021

An Adivasi elder, accused of witchcraft by her neighbours in rural India, uses faith and perseverance to survive several monstrous attacks. Living in an areabeset by widespread logging, her refusal to be driven off the land sets up a conflict deeply rooted in patriarchy and capitalism waged on women’s bodies- the witch hunt.

Karbala Memoirs

Sourav Sarangi

Bangla

40

|

2020

This film looks at Hussain’s martyrdom from the perspective of an Indian who accidentally happens to be in the ancient land that has been ravaged by war, extremism and autocracy. The narrative merges his childhood memories with immensely disturbing contemporary realities. His eyes follow the pilgrims’ progress, listening to their ballads or personal interpretations of history.

Ek Tha Gaon

Shristi Lakhera

Garhwali

61

|

2021

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.

A Night of Knowing Nothing

Payal Kapadia

English/Hindi

97

|

2021

A university student in India, writes letters to her estranged lover, while he is away. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her. Merging reality with fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and anxieties, an amorphous narrative unfolds.

Meiram - The Fireline

James Khangenbam

Manipuri

33

|

2022

As season change, Langol, once a barren hilltop in the fringe of Imphal city, brings magic of the forest. The dream of Loiya, a young man, to cover the hill with lush green has been taken up mutually by a young group of volunteers. The film gently touches the embracing colours of wild and slices of biodiversity.

Festival Book

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