For the third consecutive year, Delhi-based film-maker Madhureeta Anand is organising an international festival in the Capital to promote experimental films and documentaries shot with digital cameras.
The UFO 0110 International Digital Film Festival has already received 50 entries. “We will soon be flooded with a wide array of films because the deadline for sending entries is in December. It is essential that all films and documentaries should have been shot using digital cameras. If a film is made for celluloid then all kinds of commercial considerations come into play. Digital films encourage experimentation and are the format for the future. Even James Cameron's popular science fiction film Avatar was shot with a digital 3D camera,” says the festival director.
The festival will be held at Siri Fort Auditorium from February 23 to March 1.
Feature and short films, documentaries and animation that exemplify new wave cinema will be screened. “Films from Europe, North America, Australia and Japan will be shown alongside films from different parts of the country. Over the past two years, the festival has come to be known for screening cutting-edge digital films from across the world and we will continue the trend,” says Ms. Anand.
The festival is meant to take the digital art and film movement forward by providing fresh, innovative content to viewers. By creating a space for new styles of form and content, the organisers hope to make it a resource pool for film-makers across the world. The festival also seeks to become the congregating point for all film and video aficionados.
Last year, the festival was held in New Delhi and Mumbai and the jury members included experimental film-makers Anurag Kashyap and Sudhir Mishra. Internationally acclaimed movies like Charlie White by Samuel P. Abrahams, The Gates of Heaven by Lucy Lee and Polish your Shoes by Sam Huntley were screened last year.
Long journey
Ms. Anand first emerged as a film-maker ten years ago when she produced and directed the 30-minute documentary feature Kumbh Mela:In Search of Salvation for the German Telecast Footprint. Another documentary she made, Education a RealityOr a Myth , was nominated at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2002. Her film Sin was nominated in the short film section at the Damah Film Festival in Seattle, also in 2002.
