Dr. Prakash Baba Amte – The Real Hero

(119 min; 2014; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Samrouddhi Porey

 

The film will be introduced by Suhas Borker

 

Dr. Prakash Baba Amte – The Real Hero is a Marathi biopic based on the life of Baba Amte's son and Ramon Magsaysay award winner Dr. Prakash Amte.  Baba Amte takes his son Prakash, who has just finished his doctor's degree,  on a picnic to Hemalkasa, a village in the Bhamragad taluka of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra. How this visit transforms the life of the young medical graduate? Prakash moves to Hemalkasa. Dr. Mandakini, Prakash's college mate and wife soon joins him without any condition. To work among the Gond Madia tribals becomes their mission. Along the way, they struggle with wild animals, Naxalites and corrupt government officials.  Nana Patekar as Prakash Amte proves himself again to be a versatile actor while Sonali Kulkarni as Dr. Mandakini gives an absorbing performance. Today, Hemalkasa sets a benchmark in social transformation as well as raises questions about what kind of 'growth' led 'development' do we want in India? The film was made on a budget of 2.5 crores and became such a hit that it grossed a record six-time return for the producers

 

(Collaboration: Maharashtra Sanskritik ani Rananniti Adhyayan Samiti)

 

 

A multimedia exhibition that highlights unheard voices – the story of a woman still living in a refugee camp; how a city-wide Bachelors degree examination was put on hold due to a referendum in Sylhet; how two brothers travelled from Travancore State to the North-West Frontier Province for work and were stranded there at Partition, are some of the narratives. Narratives often not considered as part of popular imagination, the exhibition marries notions of history, memory, longing and belonging 

 

Curated by Aanchal Malhotra, The 1947 Partition Archives

 

Preview on Friday, 25 August 2017 at 18:30

 

As part of this exhibition, there will be a film screening on 

TUESDAY 29 AUGUST 2017 AT 18:30 AT C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM

 

Itihas Konya (Daughters of History; Bangladesh)

(125 min; 1999; dvd; English subtitles)

Director: Shameem Akhtar

 

The film will be introduced by Prof. Ira Bhaskar, Professor, Cinema Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University

 

(Collaboration: The 1947 Partition Archives)

 

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!