Engendered, a trans-national arts and human rights organisation that has been organising the “I View World” film festival in New York for the past several years, made its debut in the city on Wednesday. The festival ends on March 8.
The festival provides new ways of looking at human rights cinema through the lens of gender, marginalities and contemporary culture. It will feature films ranging from art house/independent to mainstream festival favourites; classics to experimental and avant-garde, to under-the-radar documentaries. During the festival, over 30 innovative features, shorts and documentaries will be screened.
Festival director and curator Myna Mukherjee said: “In these times of global ferment, entrenched and widening disparities in freedoms, and shrinking spaces for critical thought, ‘I View World’ brings voices from the world of cinema, media, academia and the development sector on a common platform to create robust conversations using the arts to galvanise, engage, uplift and transform viewer perceptions around issues pertaining to human rights and contemporary culture.”
The festival began on Wednesday with India premiere of Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette , which is based on Britain’s movement for women’s right to vote through organised protest. The film stars Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan.
Film-makers and actors Mira Nair, Onir, Hansal Mehta, Aparna Sen, Manoj Bajpayee, Prakash Jha, Leena Yadav, Radhika Apte, Shweta Tripathi, Monica Dogra, Arpita Chatterjee, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Srijit Mukherjee, and Rituparna Sengupta will attend various events and screenings to introduce their films, and join panel discussions.
Some of the films that are a part of the line up include French director Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan . Winner of the Palme d’Or awards at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival for the best feature film, it is based on the story of three Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in France. The other Delhi premiere includes Pakistani film-maker Sarmad Khoosat’s critically-acclaimed Manto . Besides this will be a retrospective of Mira Nair’s films including The Reluctant Fundamentalist , Monsoon Wedding , Mississippi Masala , Namesake; and screening of documentaries and shorts like Words with God , Migration , 9/11 , The Laughing Club of India , India Cabaret and Queen of Katwe . A special screening of Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh will be held at JNU.
Queer shorts and documentaries from South Asian Diaspora like Rosie Haber’s Relapse featuring Monica Dogra, Payal Sethi’s Leeches and regional cinema like Satarupa Sanyal’s Onyo Opalaa , National Award winner Srijit Mukherjee’s Rajkahini , Suman Ghosh’s Kadambari and Kannada film Nanu Avanalla Avalu will also be screened.
The festival is being organised across multiple venues, including the American Center, the British Council, Alliance Française, St. Stephen’s College and the School of Arts and Aesthetics in JNU.
