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Journalism of Courage
Conflict becomes the focal point of this year8217;s Open Frame Film Festival
Even as an uneasy disquiet looms over the Kashmir valley and people in Israel and Palestine grapple with the fallouts of their ongoing war, when the curtains go up at Public Service Broadcasting Trust8217;s annual Open Frame Film Festival 2008 today, 55 filmmakers will come together with their own visions and interpretations of the aftermath of strife and unrest.
8220;Our current sociopolitical scenario is marked by conflict. Even in the domain of the personal, there8217;s crisis at home. We thought it would be interesting to see multiple views on the issue,8221; said Rajiv Mehrotra, managing trustee of PSBT.
The festival at the India Habitat Centre will feature over 55 national and international documentary films that chronicle conflict and its various faces. Umesh Aggarwal, who will showcase his hour-long documentary called Divided Colours of a Nation, for instance, has dealt with the issue of reservation. 8220;It took me 15 months to finish it because incidents like the Gujjar riots kept happening throughout and I needed to update my work,8221; he says. He recalls his meetings with a cabinet secretary from Andhra Pradesh, who insists on having reservation, and another schedule caste entrepreneur, a BITS Pilani, IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, who wants it to be a facility only for the needy. 8220;How do you resolve an issue like this particularly when people are so ill-informed about the constitutional provisions,8221; he wonders.
Likewise, for Polish filmmaker and Indophile Malgorzata Skiba, a visit to Leh-Ladakh in 2003, unearthed a Pandora8217;s Box. 8220;The Buddhist nuns there were subjected to a life of servitude. They were ill treated and denied basic rights. It was an archaic and disturbing practice,8221; recalls Skiba. Her film, Autumn in the Himalayas, to be screened on September 14, tells the story of these women and their effort to build nunneries and better their lot. Screened at the 48th Krakow Film Festival in Poland and the Visual Arts Festival in Rhodes, Greece, the film is now set for its India premiere. There will be other Indian and South Asian premieres as well, including Meira Asher8217;s Women See Lot of Things Netherlands, the story of three ex-war combatants who fought in the decade-long civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and Jenny Mackenzie8217;s Kick Like a Girl USA.
Kashmir, of course, has a special place too, with films, installations and forum discussions. An installation themed around terror will be displayed by Kashmiri artist Malik Sajad while a 45-minute film called Crossing the Lines: Kashmir, Pakistan and India, a story of people at war over borders and boundaries, by Pakistani filmmakers Pervez Hoodboy and Zian Mian will be screened on September 15.
8220;Increasingly, what we want is to move beyond a passive viewing of filmmaking into more engaging discussions,8221; says Mehrotra, adding that the intensive filmmaking workshops that have been included in this year8217;s festival is a move towards that direction.
