Discussion on the book edited Richard Falk, Manoranjan Mohanty and Victor Faessel (Orient Blackswan, 2017)

 

Speakers: Dr. Upendra Baxi, Professor of Law, University of Warwick, former Vice-Chancellor, University of Delhi; Prof. Muchkund Dubey, President, Council for Social Development; and Dr. Ashis Nandy, Emeritus Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

 

Chair: Prof. Mark Juergensmeyer, Professor of Sociology and Global Studies, former Director, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

 

This volume presents multiple viewpoints on the possible future of the planet, as well as on what people in different parts of the world hope for and fear about the near future

 

(Collaboration: Orient Blackswan)

Celebrating 90 Years of Tagore’s Words on Java

Speaker: Prof. Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Professor, IIT Delhi

 

(Collaboration: Embassy of Indonesia)

PERFORMANCE ? C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM  AT 18:30

Apara: A Look at Lord Krishna Beyond the Myths and Stories of Common Retelling

A presentation in Bharatanatyam by Ameya Repertory

 

Dancers: Chitra Chandrasekhar Dasarathy from Bangalore along with her disciples Rajalakshmi Suresh; Roopa Manoj; Roopa Guha; Rajeshwari Aravind; Priya Kaul; and Aswathy Manoharan

 

Lead speaker: Shri Shivshank r Menon, Chairperson, ICS Advisory Board

Panelists: Prof. Alka Acharya, Honorary Fellow and former Director, ICS; Dr. Zorawar Daulet Singh, Foreign Affairs Analyst and Fellow, Centre for Policy Research; and Dr. Navroz Dubash, Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research

 

Moderator: Shri Zakka Jacob, Deputy Editor, CNN-News 18

 

(Collaboration: Institute of Chinese Studies)

 

 

 

 

The State of Indian Democracy
 

Speaker: Dr. Subhash C. Kashyap

Chair: Shri N.N. Vohra,  President, IIC

 

(Collaboration: Pai Panandikar Trust)

 

 

Poetry and Music

Pran Nevile pays tribute to Ghalib and Kaifi Azmi followed by a concert by Dr Meelu Verma

 

(Collaboration: K.L. Saigal Memorial Circle)

 

 

 

Interpreting the Past through Science

Speaker: Dr. V. N. Prabhakar, Superintending Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India, Visiting Faculty at the Archaeological Sciences Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar.  Carried out investigations on the bead drilling technology of Dholavira Harappans, copper remains from Dholavira, palaeoclimatic investigations of northern Rajasthan based on archaeobotanical remains.

Chair: Shri B.M Pande
 

Archaeology has emerged into a multi-disciplinary science, departing from the traditional methodology of ‘descriptive archaeology’. It now employs various scientific disciplines, like geology, material sciences, metallurgy, anthropology, botany, zoology, computer science, statistics, etc. This lecture will explain a few case studies of understanding and interpreting the past using scientific disciplines, in particular, those undertaken by the speaker in the field of Harappan archaeology. The case studies will include on the bead drilling technology of the Harappans, evidence for textile remains and their interpretation, evidence for mobility of people during third and second millennium BCE.

 

SATURDAY 19

 

FESTIVAL ? C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM FROM 11:00 ONWARDS

 

 

Alifa (Assam)

(109 min; 2016; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Deep Choudhury

 

Recipient of the Golden Lotus Award for Best Debut Film of a Director, 64th National Film Awards 2017; and Best Film Award, Ottawa Indian Film Festival, Canada

 

Ali, a daily wage earner living in the vicinity of a sprawling city, has to cope with uncertainty, hardship and abuse. He is at the mercy of a forest guard from being evicted from his family’s new-found habitat in a green hilly area overlooking the city. He finds solace in his hardworking, young wife and their two children. Alifa is a saga of human-wildlife conflict competing with basic questions of love, hatred, dreams and desires as well as the frailties of human nature and wider social bonding

 

AT 14:00

The Pangti Story (Nagaland)

(26 min; 2016; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Sesino Yhoshu

Produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust

 

Recipient of the Golden Beaver Award for Best Film, National Science Film Festival, Kolkata 2017

 

The film explores the transition of an entire village from one that slaughtered hundreds and thousands of Amur Falcons, the longest travelling raptors in the world, who fly from Siberia every fall to roost in Pangti, a small village in Nagaland, to becoming their most fervent conservationists

 

AT 14:45

Beautiful Lives (Assam)

(123 min; 2017; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Kangkan Deka

 

Screened at Kolkata International Film Festival

 

Based on the 2008 bombings in Guwahati, the film portrays the undying spirit of one of the victims and his day-to-day struggle to survive

 

AT 17:00

Sabin Alun (The Broken Song; Assam)

(52 min; 2016; dvd; English subtitles)

Script & Direction: Altaf Mazid

Produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust

 

Recipient of the Cinema Experimenta Award, John Abraham National Film Awards, Signs, Kerala 2016; Indian Panorama 2016

 

Sabin Alun examines the oral singing traditions of the Karbi tribe from Assam. One of the stories that has passed down the generations is a local version of the Ramayana epic, in which Sita is Sinta, the brothers are named Ram and Lokon, and the villain is Ravon. Sabin is the other name for Shurpanakha, whose nose is cut off by Laxman, forcing Ravana into taking revenge for her humiliation by abducting Sita. Rather than a straightforward information-led documentary that introduces us to the Karbi tradition and includes interviews with the community members, Mazid gets performers to sing and enact episodes from the epic. The documentary brilliantly captures with minimal resources the manner in which the Karbis have merged the themes of the Ramayana with their animistic tenets and agricultural lifestyle

 

AT 18:00

Antardrishti (Man with the Binoculars; Assam)

(100 min; 2016; HD; English subtitles)

Director: Rima Das

 

MAMI Mumbai Film Festival; and Black Nights Talinn Film Festival

 

Chaudhury, a geography teacher, living a quiet, retired life of patriarch watches over his family in rural Assam, India. His life starts turning upside down when his musician son, who has come for a visit gifts him a pair of Binoculars!

 

 

 

Far away from the glamour world of big budget Hindi cinema – and consequently the gaze of the usual film goer in the Indian heartland – filmmakers in Northeast India have, over the years, been consistently telling their stories in an artistic and grounded manner. This festival presents some significant voices among a new generation of filmmakers who following in the footsteps of veterans like Aribam Syam Sharma, Jahnu Barua and the late Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia, have made a mark at the international and national level. Organised in collaboration with North East Media Forum the festival includes award winning documentaries and features

 

Curator: Utpal Borpujari, filmmaker and film critic

 

Introduction

By Utpal Borpujari

 

Aaba (Grandfather; Arunachal Pradesh)

(22 min; 2017; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Amar Kaushik

 

Recipient of the Special Prize of Generation Kplus International Jury for Best Short Film, 67th Berlin Film Festival; and Best Short Fiction Film, 64th National Film Awards 2016

 

Aaba is about a farmer (Dani Randa), who lives with his wife (Dani Chunya) and granddaughter (Sunku) in Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh. He is diagnosed with lung cancer and has only a few days to live. He decides to dig his own grave, but an unexpected event pushes the story towards a startling climax

 

Followed by

Loktak Lairembee (Lady of the Lake; Manipur)

(71 min; 2016; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Haobam Paban Kumar

 

Multiple award winner including Best Environment Film, 64th National Film Awards 2016; 26th G. Aravindan Puruskaram for the Best Debut Director, 2016; FIPRESCI India, Critics Award, 9th Bengaluru International Film Festival 2017; NETPAC Award (Asian Select), 22nd Kolkata International Film Festival 2016; among others

 

Haobam Paban Kumar’s debut feature film is based on the lives of people living on floating huts in Manipur’s Loktak Lake. Under the guise of protecting the serenity of the lake’s ecosystem, in 2011 the authorities had burnt the huts leaving thousands of fishermen homeless. The film is the story of one such fisherman, Tomba who accidentally comes across a gun hidden in the biomass. Possessing a gun transforms Tomba who becomes very assertive and begins to believe that it is the solution to all his problems. One day, a mysterious lady wanders in from the lake and knocks on his door in the middle of the night

 

An exhibition of black and white photographs by Bivas Bhattacharjee from Kolkata

 

Inauguration by Shri Amit Mehra, eminent photographer and Ms Ina Puri, art curator on Thursday, 17^th August 2017 at 18:30