Imaging the Arts, 12th International Film Festival on Art and Artist

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JD Centre of Art (JDCA) was established by artist Jatin Das, Padma Bhushan awardee and proponent of cultural heritage preservation. The Centre, located in Bhubaneswar, aims to conserve and promote traditional and contemporary visual arts.
 
Film Forum was established in 2006 as a permanent, in-house programme of JDCA. It archives short and documentary films on performing, literary and visual arts, and artists of all forms: painters, sculptors, potters, dancers, musicians and craftsmen from India and abroad. The Forum focuses on natural and man-made art, the concern being with imaging the arts and ensuring authentic visual documentation.
 
The 12^th International Film Festival on Art and Artist will be presented by JD Centre of Art’s Film Forum in Bhubaneswar, Odisha from the 12^th to 14^th January 2018. The three-day, non-competitive festival, “Imaging the Arts” invites filmmakers, critics, and artists from around the world to attend. The event showcases films both long & short – narrative, documentary, animation, and film essays –  in addition to panel discussions, lectures, and workshops. An exhibition displaying traditional handicrafts, handlooms, and art books is held alongside the festival, with stalls showcasing traditional Orissa crafts lining the approach to the Festival venue.
 
The JD Centre of Art’s Film Festival is possibly the only film festival in India that is dedicated to Art. Each year the festival features a different focus around which films are curated in addition to its annual celebration of the art and culture of Odisha; the focus this year is Literature and Cinema. Advisory, selection, and screening committees comprised of eminent filmmakers, critics, and artists curate the Festival in both Delhi and Odisha. Aruna Vasudev has been the Festival Director since 2016, with Biren Das as Associate Director.

JDCA will open this year’s festival by paying respects to renowned curator and textile expert Martand Singh, showcasing excerpts from his interview with Prasad Bidapa about the importance of handmade fabrics in India. JDCA will show 4 major award-winning films: Iranian film The Salesman (Forushande) by Asghar Farhadi, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016; Argentinian film The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secruto de sus Ojos), winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009, Swiss film My Life as a Zucchini by Claude Barrass, which won the Cesar Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Animated Film, and Life in Metaphors: A Portrait of Girish Kasaravalli by O P Srivastava, which received the National Award for Best Biographical Film. The festival will also screen 6 films by alumni from the Film and Television Institute of India, including five works by Nirad Mohapatra: feature film Maya Mrigaand documentaries Ahilya’s Wedding (AhilyaraBahaghara), Chhau Dance of Mayurbhanja, DhauligiriShantistupa, and Pata Paintings;Lakshmi Ra AbhisarabyRaj Gopal Mishra,Atul by Kamal Swaroop, The Fourth Direction by Gurvinder Singh, and Kapila by Sanju Surendran. Other works to look for include animation films from France; experimental films from Germany, Australia, Canada, and Iraq; In Return: Just a Book, shot in Kerala and St. Petersburg by Shiny Jacob Benjamin; and a film about Nabendu Ghosh’s close association with Bimal Roy, made by Ghosh’s daughter Ratnottama Sengupta, titled And They Made Classics….JDCA is proud to be showing multiple films by Odia filmmakers including Raju Mishra’s Lakshmi Ra Abhisara, City’s Step Child and the Water Colour Dreams by Pranab K Aich, Rang Rasika and Soubhagya Mishra by Sanjay Bhatt, and Santal by Abhaya Nayak, in addition, the five aforementioned films by Nirad Mohapatra. There will also be a number of events featuring Delhi-based filmmakers, including the workshop on digital filmmaking conducted by Nandan Saxena and the showing of filmsThe Face Behind the Mask by Nirmal Chander Dandriyal, and Faces: The Enigmatic World of Himmat Shah by Vinod Bhardwaj and Rohit Suri.
 
JDCA has organized a wealth of workshops and lectures scheduled to take place at the Film Festival. Artist Bryan Mulvihill will conduct a workshop on calligraphy entitled Imaging the Word, award-winning filmmaker Nandan Saxena will hold a digital filmmaking workshop Cinematic Films on a Budget, and actress and director Nandita Das will give an illustrated lecture on her upcoming film, Manto.
 
While the Film Festivals held at the IDCOL auditorium in Bhubaneshwar, the construction of JDCA continues at sit, located opposite the historic Khandagiri Caves.  There are currently over 2,000 documentaries in the Forum’s archive. Donations of films have come from Doordarshan, Films Division, National Film Archive, Lalit Kala Academy, Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, Public Service Broadcasting Trust, InstitutFrancais, Swiss Embassy, and individual filmmakers.
 
Department of Tourism, Govt. of Odisha, is the principal sponsor of the Festival. The media partners in Odisha are the dailies Orissa Post and Dharitri. The outdoor publicity partner is the well-known company, Team.
 
Highlights of the 12^th edition of the Festival – 
 
Film screenings:

• Filmed interview of the renowned curator and textile expert Martand Singh by Prasad Bidapa about the importance of handmade fabrics in India
• A special tribute to the influential Odiya filmmaker, the late Nirad Mohapatra, best known for his Odiya film Maya Mriga, which won at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984, with an illustrative talk on the filmmaker preceding the screening by Biren Das, Sampad Mohapatra, Raju Misra and Susanta Misra
• Iranian film The Salesman (Forushande) by Asghar Farhadi, which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016
• Argentinian film The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de sus Ojos), winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009
• Swiss film My Life as a Courgette by Claude Barras and Max Karli, based on a novel by Gilles Paris which won Cesar Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Animated Film
• Life in Metaphors: A Portrait of Girish Kasaravalli, which received the National Award for Best Biographical Film, the filmmaker will be present
• Kapila by Sanju Surendran, which won the National Award for Best Arts/Cultural film, the filmmaker will be present
• And they made classics…, a tribute to famous screenwriter Nabendu Ghosh, most well-known for his collaboration with Bimal Roy, by Ratnottamma Sengupta, the filmmaker will be present
• Laxmi Ra Abhisaraby Raju Misra film based on a short story by renowned writer Manoj Das, both the filmmaker and the author will be present
• Face Behind the Mask by Nirmal Chander Dandriyal, a multiple National Award-winning filmmaker, the filmmaker will be present
• Russian film Wooden temples of the Leningrad Region about the events and people who influenced the destiny of wooden temples in the Leningrad region by Smirnov Igor, producer Elena Smirnova will be present
• Faces: The Enigmatic World of Himmat Shah by Vinod Bhardwaj, a senior Hindi poet, novelist, art and film critic, and Rohit Suri, a senior photographer and cameraman
• Time-lapse documentary film TimeScapes by Tom Lowe, American filmmaker and winner of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year award
• Atul, based on the life of the contemporary artist Atul Dodiya by Kamal Swaroop, the filmmaker will be present
• The Broken Spine: Art as the Will to Survive on contemporary artist Nalini Malini by Ein Lall, the filmmaker will be present  
• A bouquet of short French animation films
• Nostalgia for the Future on the modernist approach to the architecture in India by Avijit Mukul Kishore, the filmmaker will be present
• The Fourth Direction (ChauthiKoot) by Gurvinder Singh based on the Punjabi writer Waryam Singh Sandhu’s two short stories

Illustrative lectures:

• Nandita Das, the renowned actress and director will give a talk entitled From the Written Words to Moving Images on her forthcoming film Manto about the path-breaking writer Saadat Hassan Manto
• Manisha Mohan, animator and the chief designer at Tata Interactive, will give a talk on Animation and New Media 
• Meet the Artist illustrative talk as a tribute to Nirad Mohapatra 

Workshops:

• Imaging the Word: Calligraphy by American artist Bryan Mulvihill
• Cinematic Films on a Budget: Digital Filmmaking by award-winning filmmakers, conducted by Nandan Saxena. 

Website: www.jdcentreofart.org