Saturday, December 4, 2021

23rd Madurai Film Festival 2021 : Indian Documentaries

23rd Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2021

Indian Documentaries




1) Days Of Summer
Dir: Adhiraj Buragohain; 58.40 min; Assamese with English Subtitles; India; Documentary

Amid the pandemic, I went back from my university to my village in Assam. This film is about my interaction with my family and the village members. The film also explores the landscape of Assam, which is changing rapidly due to environmental and socio-economic reasons.

2) Ghar Ka Pata
Dir: Madhulika Jalali; 1 hr 7 min; English/Hindi/Kashmiri with English subtitles; 2020; India; Documentary

I was 6 when my family had to leave the Kashmir valley due to an armed insurgency in 1990. This personal account seeks to understand ‘loss’, ‘identity’ & is an attempt to reconstruct the long lost home of my birth, a place and of a time that exists in mine and my family’s collective memories.

3)Who says the Lepchas are vanishing
Director- Abhyuday Khaitan; 42 minutes 21 seconds; Hindi; 2020

The last documentary featuring Soham Tshering Lepcha, the cultural icon, and the most respected Lepcha figure, documents his life and work. A look at his life and work is also inevitably a look at the tribe, as his life and work are rooted, intertwined, and inseparable from his tribe.

4) Kerala hip hop- Into the roots
Director- Akshay K.P; 9 minutes 4 seconds; English, Malayalam with English subtitles; 2021


5)Dreaming of Words
Director- Nandan; 60 minutes; Malayalam, Tamil with English subtitles; 2020

Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, compiles a dictionary connecting four Indian languages. Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty-five years making the multilingual dictionary. This unique dictionary offers a comparative study of Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu. 'Dreaming of Words' traces Sreedharan's life, work, love for languages and the struggles to get the dictionary published. The film also explores the linguistic and cultural diversity in India.

6) Moving Upstream: Ganga
Director- Shridhar Sudhir; 1 hour 45 minutes; Bengali, English, Hindi with English subtitles; 2021

The 'Moving Upstream: Ganga’ documentary was filmed over 6 months on a 3000km walk along River Ganga in India. This documentary explores the idea of walking, people’s responses to a walking traveller in this fast-paced era and an evolving relationship with the natural world. It does this while also amplifying the voices and concerns of the riparian community

7) TUN-RUNG-KHAM (The Golden Willow)

Dir: Mridupawan Bora; 24:20 mins; Assamese with English subtitles; 2021; India; doc

A glimpse into the history, folk traditions and cultural preservation of the Tai Ahom people, from Yunnan to a glorious dynasty in Assam and the existing generation with deep rooted connection to their ancestors that transcend time.

8) BACKSTAGE
Dir:Lipika Singh Darai; 85 mins; Odia with English subtitles ;2020; India; doc

The film portrays the lives and times of puppeteers of Odisha, India. It documents four forms of puppetry; the glove, the string, the rod and the shadow, which are now being performed by the last generation of artists. After them, the art form will probably die. The folk art form, which is as vulnerable as its performers who mostly belong to the lower strata of the society in terms of caste and economy, is experiencing a silent death. The filmmaker builds a personal narrative to trace the time a dying art form is going through. 



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