Spotlight on cinema as Auroville film festival begins on Monday

The eighth edition of Auroville Film Festival (AVFF), the universal township’s biennial event to spotlight cinema, gets rolling on Monday.

The AVFF ’24 (January 22-28) will focus on themes of human unity, and will feature films across four categories – films by residents of Auroville and the bio-region; films about Auroville and the bio-region; films by students of Auroville and the bio-region; and international films that develop the theme of human unity.

The festival will feature 22 films by Aurovilians, one film about Auroville, one film by a student of Auroville, and 15 films that tackle themes related to human unity----these include ‘Apnea’ (Italian/Stefano Poggioni, Claudia Cataldi, Elena Poggioni), ‘Judges Under Pressure’ (Polish/ Kacper Lisowski), ‘Solidarity Crime’ (multilingual/Nicolás Braguinsky Cascini & Juan Pablo Aris Escarcena), ‘Bangla Surf Girls’ (Bengali/Elizabeth D. Costa), ‘All That Breathes’ (Hindi/Shaunak Sen) ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ (Malayalam/Jeo Baby) and ‘This Stained Dawn’ (Urdu/ Anam Abbas).

According to organisers, the AVFF aims to showcase films that attempt to foster a deeper understanding of the aspirations of Auroville through a creative engagement with the medium of cinema, as well as turning film-viewing from a passive activity into an intimate dialogue between artist and audience. The festival will also reflect the spirit of Auroville that manifests across its constant engagement with creative, experimental and spiritual research.

The event has also scheduled online/offline interactions with a host of filmmakers.

The jury will include Ezhilmathy (producer and costume designer), Premendra Mazumder (Vice President Federation of Film Societies of India and secretary, Asia Pacific section of the International Federation of Film Societies; and Sivakumar Mohanan, director-producer and founder secretary of Chennai Film Society.

The festival is a project of the Multimedia Centre (Cinema Paradiso), which has scheduled daily screenings of films from around the world at the 124-seater, state-of-the-art auditorium in the Town Hall area of Auroville. The other screening locations are Auroville Town Hall Garden and Entertainment Oxygen Online Platform (https://app.entertainmentoxygen.com/festivals/aurovillefilmfestival)

Running alongside the AVFF are a host of other events such as film poster exhibitions, art installations and live music concerts through the event by Auroville artists, and panel discussions on the role of cinema in developing human unity.

Another highlight is the ‘Kino Kabaret’, a film-making challenge, where participants write, shoot, edit and present a film within 48 hours.

The AVFF will start at 5 p.m. and conclude with an awards ceremony on January 28 and a screening of winning films.