Festival Note IFFB 2025

 The Film Society team has put together a retrospective of Girish Kasaravalli, a selection of four restored classics in collaboration with the Film Heritage Foundation, a collection of shorts and contemporary feature films that have been screened and discussed around the world. The retrospective emerged after conversations with Girish about prints of films available with him. He did not have rights to all of his films, so we had to start with what was accessible. We managed to access five films from 1970s till 2020, a film making practice over five decades, tracking the social and political life of Karnataka, in particular and India in general. Girish’s films have been made under very stringent conditions, some of his films have been produced by the leading actors who played the leading parts in Tai Saheba (Joymala) and Dweepa (Soundarya). His films foreground the decaying social and political fabric of a society.

The restored classics (Ghatashraddha (1977), Thamp (1978), Maya Miriga (1984) and Ishanou (1990)) were made possible with the collaboration of Film Heritage Foundation. These films have been screened at major festivals around the world and now made available to our audience. The restoration process that was initiated by National Film archives is not made available to film societies after privatisation and its effects. To screen any restored Indian Classic is going to be a struggle.

The 14th edition of the feature film festival brings works from across the country that deals with issues of women, tribes, new technologies, intersections of uneven development and oppression of peoples. Feminichi Fathima, set in a small town in Kerala, explores the challenges of women in a conservative society. Appuram explores sensitively the issues within family from the perspective of a young adolescent. Angammal, based on a short story of Perumal Murugan, explores the choices of a remote village of Tamil Nadu.

Aranaya Sahay’s “Humans in the loop” explores the world of Artificial Intelligence set in a rural Jharkhand, foregrounding the interstices of choice, control in the face of global control of AI. Sisir Jha’s “Tortoise Under the Earth” explores the rural Santhali life set in Jharkhand bringing the conflicts of development and indigenous lived life of the community. Abhijit Chowdhury’s “Dhrubor Aschorjo Jibon” is an interesting exploration on parallel worlds exploring the metaphysics of choice set in the worlds of Jamini Roy, Gaganendranath Tagore, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Binod Behari Mukherjee.

“Tees” explores the life of a family over a period of six decades exploring the interstices of state control, repercussions of inequality and tenderness through the lives of its characters set in Kashmir (1989), Delhi (2019) and Mumbai (2042).

We hope to survive in these difficult times as a film society and bring to you a viewing experience that starts conversations.