Screen Presence

The worlds of humans and djinns come together at the shrine of Bade Sarkar in Badayun; here dreams acquire a special relevance,and one can hear — and heed — voices from another world. Iram Ghufran’s film,There’s Something in the Air,in which the “possessed” narrate their stories,won the National Award in 2011,and will be screened at the Documentary Film Festival,a two-day event by Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) to mark India Habitat Centre’s 15th anniversary.

Several award-winning documentaries make up the roster of the 26 films at the festival. Fiddlers on the Thatch,which won the National Award in 2004,shows how music changed the lives of impoverished children of Gandhi Ashram School,Kalimpong. Roots of Love documents the changing significance of the hair and the turban among Sikhs in India.

The films,unlike Bollywood masala fare,are meant to provoke the audience into thinking and,perhaps,taking action. Anupama Srinivasan’s 2009 documentary I Wonder asks the questions,“What does school mean to children? What kind of learning takes place within the school and outside it?” The filmmaker focuses on how the school system impacts the lives of children at the extremities of the country. Much Ado About Knotting — as the pun on a William Shakespeare’s play suggests — is about marriages but of the sort that keeps India’s matchmaking industry booming.

The festival will be held at IHC on Saturday and Sunday,10 am onward. Contact: 2468 2001 Dipanita Nath