Editor

IFA FILM FESTIVAL
January 2- February 20, 2011
Venue: National Gallery for Modern Art (NGMA)
Manikyavelu Mansion
49 Palace Road, Bengaluru 560 052
Contact: 080 2234 2338


January 2, 2011, Sunday, 3 pm
BISHAR BLUES, 1 Hour 16 minutes
By Amitabh Chakraborty

It is a 90-minute film based on the fakirs of Bengal, exploring their music and their deeply spiritual everyday life as a living practice of radical syncretism. In this film, Amitabh Chakroborty talks about music as an integral part of their mythology and that music enshrines and expresses the philosophy of Man. This film has won the National Award for Best Non-fiction Film, Best Editing and Best Audiography.

January 8, 2011, Saturday, 3 pm

THE OTHER SONG, 2 Hours
By Saba Dewan

In 1935, Rasoolan bai, the well known singer from Varanasi, recorded for the Gramaphone a thumri that she would never sing again- ‘Lagat job anwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar’ (My breasts are wonded, don’t throw flowers at me). A variation of her more famous song - ‘Lagat Karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar’ ( My heart is wounded, don’t throw flowers at me), the 1935 recording, never to be repeated, faded from public memory and eventually got lost. More than seventy years later the film travels through Varanasi, Lucknow and Muzzafarpur in search of the forgotten thumri. Through the story of this lost thumri sung by Rasoolan Bai, whose career as a performer overlapped with significant transitions in both the practice of music and public female sexualities, the film examines the major shifts in the history of the tradition.



January 9, 2011, Sunday, 11:30 am
MAYA BAZAR, 1 Hour
By K M Madhusudhanan

This is a film on Surabhi, a 120-year old travelling theatre company from Andhra Pradesh. Envisaged as a journey with the repertory company, the film, examines the everyday activities of these travelling actors and their families, rehearsals, exercises, the staging of the plays based on the epics and the puranas, the audience, sets, make-up and costume design. The film also explores the traces of Parsi theatre, silent cinema from the Phalke era and the paintings of Ravi Verma in the design of the theatre company’s sets and costumes.


January 9, 2011, Sunday, 12:45 pm
OUT OF THIN AIR, 50 minutes
By Shabani Hassanwalia and Samreen Farooqui

‘Out of Thin Air’ is the story of one of the most surreal and hostile landscapes in the world. This is the story of Ladakh, not through the postcards that tourists often see, but through the subterranean, local film movement that has taken such strong root here in the last six years, that it has become a voice of the people. Today, taxi drivers, grocery store owners, cops and monks are producers, directors, camerapersons and actors of one of the youngest, and most dynamic, local film industries in the world.


January 23, 2011, Sunday, 11:30 am
CITY OF PHOTOS, 1 Hour
By Nishtha Jain

City Of Photos explores the little known ethos of neighborhood photo studios in Indian cities, discovering entire imaginary worlds in the smallest of spaces. Desires, memories and stories all so deeply linked to photographs all come together as a part of the personal journey into the city of photos.


February 12, 2011, Saturday, 3pm
NATAK JARI HAIN, 1 Hour 24 minutes
By Lalit Vachani

A film on the New-Delhi based theatre group, Jan Natya Manch (Janam), critically explores its history and contemporary practices. Combining archival footage and documentation of contemporary performances, the film especially focuses on the Nukkad Natak (street theatre), and its ability to create innovative contexts that facilitate significant involvement on the part of its audience.

February 12, 2011, Saturday, 4:30 pm
RASIKEN RE, 33 minutes
By Pooja Kaul

"Rasikan Re" ("O Lover of Life") is an urban story about the cautious attraction between a young girl, Madhu, and her 40-year-old neighbor Kedar. The film--inspired by the Ragamala, a tradition in Indian Moghul miniature painting that attempts to visualize music--explores a young woman's desire, the correlation between art, music and life, and the rhythm of urban India. Apart from the historical, aesthetic and socio-cultural contexts of the Ragamala tradition, the study will explore how the conventions of the Ragamala can themselves inform the stylistics of representing the tradition on film.


February 13, 2011, Sunday, 11:30 am
KITTE MIL VE MAHI, 1 Hour 15 minutes
By Ajay Bhardwaj

A deeply felt and moving film, Ajay Bharadwaj’s Kitte Mil Ve Mahi cuts to the quick and puts across a well reasoned and eloquent quest of the Dalits in Punjab to take on the legitimacy of the deeply exploitative and humiliating caste system. This sensitively crafted and provocative film provides a glimpse of the alternate cultural forms of the Punjabi Dalits that critique the oppression of the ‘upper’ castes and articulate a powerful vision of social justice. It focuses, in particular, on the popular Sufi traditions of the Punjabi Dalits.


February 19, 2011, Saturday, 3 pm
THE LISTENER’S TALE, 1 Hour 16 minutes
By Arghya Basu

This is a film exploring the cultural history of Tibetan Buddhism in Sikkim through the sacred dance theatre of Chham. The film examines this ritual dance as it shapes and is shaped by its religious and cultural contexts, as well as the mutations in its traditional meanings through modernity and education. The film seeks to be a witness to the contradictions and counter-forces that sustain this ancient art practice. The Filmmaker was awarded the Pierre and Yolande Perrault Grant for young filmmakers by the Cinema du Reel, France for this film.


February 20, 2011, Sunday, 11:30 am
NEE ENGEY, 2 Hours 38 minutes
By R V Ramani

The film inquires into the performative and technical aspects of shadow puppetry while simultaneously striving to serve as a record of the life and times of the puppeteers. It also seeks to identify useful comparisons and areas of common interest between shadow puppetry and cinema. Ramani’s film identifies parallels and areas of common interest between shadow puppetry and cinema, while as an art form it is also in conflict with the forces of manipulation and crass commercialization of the medium.