How important is the margin on a page? Is it just a blank space that surrounds the text or is there something more to it? Drawing a parallel between mainstream society and a page of written text,Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust is presenting a short film festival,Untold Stories From the Margins,to highlight stories of the underdog. The difference between the margin and the mainstream is the relative location taken by us as obsevers,our point of view, says Kanishka Prasad,the curator of the festival. The two-day event,which opens today at Muktadhara Auditorium in Gole Market,has a selection of three documentaries. It starts with multiple award-winning filmmaker Amlan Dattas BOM aka A Day Ahead of Democracy,about Malana,a remote village in the Himalayas,where the chief source of livelihood is a thriving international trade in high-quality hashish. Datta,who won the National Award for the Best Ethnographic Film,is actively looking for alternative means of economic sustenance for the villagers, says Prasad. Day Two of the festival will see Nakul Sawhneys Izzatnagr ki Asabhya Betiyaan,the stories of five feisty Jat women who take on the powerful,and controversial,Khap Panchayats of Haryana. Consequently,they have to fight honour crimes and social boycott. Before the curtain drops on the festival,there will be a capsule of eight films,some only a minute-long. The hero of each story is a person or group that is fighting a powerful entity,in most cases,an industry or corporate. The festival will also be screened at Studio Safdar in Shaadi Khampur from July 20-22.
