Now Showing:Jafar Panahi in Jatland

“Haryana is on the verge of a cultural revolution,” says festival director Ajit Rai. This year,at the festival,Rai pays tributes to Mani Kaul and Shammi Kapoor and celebrates the rise of Bhojpuri cinema. Rai admits that running a festival is not easy,the biggest problem being the fund crunch. “The college has great infrastructure,and I have consciously kept government agencies out of it since I don’t want any interference,” he says. The films showcased here come from the private collections of Rai,Jansatta editor Om Thanvi,writers Sanjay Sahay and Vinod Bhardwaj. As for hosting the guests,he resorts to economy travel and the college guest house.

This year’s edition that started on September 30 boasts of several big names — actor Manoj Bajpayi and the cast of West is West — Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi,Om Puri and Kundan Shah. “We are doing this at an activist level,” says Rai,who is also eyeing DAV college in Faridabad for his next project,and aspiring to host a Punjab International Film Festival (on the lines of HIFF) in Amritsar and another one in Mathura for international students.

“There is another one planned for farmers in Kushinagar,UP,and one for media personnel,” he says,leading the way to the auditorium where the screening of Andy De Emmony’s West is West is going on. We spot its spirited producer,Leslie Udwin,who came all the way from Copenhagen. West is West is full of light and layered moments and elicits a lot of response from the crowd. “Like the characters in the film,George Khan’s two wives — Ella and Basheera — here too,language does not come in the way of conversation,” says Udwin,eager to answer any questions about the film.

Known for its rustic nature and orthodox thinking,Jatland (the Jat-dominated belt of Haryana) is perceived to be hardly in touch with the arts and cinema. And so,when Jamshedpur-based filmmaker Amit Saran got a call to take a class in filmmaking in Yamunagar,he became curious. “I never thought Haryana will sustain one,” he says. For him,cinema is a personal expression and all one needs is an idea and a camera to translate it on screen. But can world cinema work its charm in Yamunanagar? “That’s the beauty of a small place — people come from different and difficult backgrounds. They are neither trained nor crafted,but they have great stories to tell,” says Saran,who will screen his film Neela Batua at the end of the festival.

His views are echoed by Udwin,who says,“One has to give people a choice against the old,boring and meaningless money-making movies. We are ready,it’s time the distributors get ready too.”

From screening Abbas Kiarostamy’s Certified Copy,Roman

Polanski’s The Ghost Writer,Pedro Almodaver’s Volver,Peter Hsun Chan’s Warlords,Jafar Panahi’s Off Side,Sameera Makhalmalbar’s Blackboard,Wong Kar Wai’s 2046,Bille August’s Goodbye Bafana,British film Brick Lane,Gautam Ghosh’s Moner Manush,Girish Kasaravalli’s Rising the Dreams,HIFF will also see the grand premiere of 10 films — including Kundan Shah’s Three Sisters,Amit Rai’s Road to Sangam,Geetanjali Sinha’s Ye Khula Aasmaan and Basu Chatterjee’s Tiriya Charittar.

As for the net effect,Rai has the figures ready. “In the last four years,more than 700 girls from this college have applied to the FTII,Pune,from a mere 30 applications initially. The number of applications for the film appreciation course have risen from nothing to 80,” says a proud Rai,who also edits the National School of Drama’s magazine and is a former Jansatta reporter.

“Cinema is a visual language and people do react to it. We need to uneducate a man to make him learn new things and evolve all over again,” says Shah. Like Rai says,cinema changes people and people change cinema.

The festival is on till October 7. Entry is free