Two-month fest for cinephiles

Osianama’s latest art and film festival addresses the changing relationship between man, animals and nature using cinema

Osianama at Liberty has kicked off a two-month festival in the city, which will showcase some of the finest films from across the world of cinema. Titled Animal-Human-Nature Continuum, the festival will address the issues of animal welfare and the environment and will host screenings of both documentaries and feature films spanning the last 100 years, tackling these subjects.

When quizzed about the theme for this edition of Osianama, Neville Tuli, chairman of Osian’s group and the man behind the festival, said, “Rather than rejoicing in the absolute purity and innocence of the dog or cat, we fail to give strays he support and love required, especially in India, a place where deep injustices inflicted upon humans seem to be enough reason for most to perpetuate other injustices without remorse.” Adding that the festival was an effort towards helping humans be compassionate again, Neville said, “We need to fall in love again with a deep uncluttered innocence and an ability to relearn the compassionate roots of being human. This means we need to rebuild our roots with all other living creatures and nature, restructuring all mediocre hierarchies created and all unnecessary preconceptions.”

To serve the purpose of bringing humans and nature closer, the festival will be showcasing about 170 movies in categories like Primordial Metamorphosis to Variations on the ‘Stray’ — from Canine to Migrant; Refugee to Homeless; Indigenous Grace to Water — Purity Polluted; to the Superiority Complex — Rooted in Science-Fiction and Horror: From Godzilla to King Kong; Cat Woman to Mad Max.

Earlier this year, Osianama curated the Womanhood Festival as well, which dealt with stages in a woman’s life like girlhood, coming of age, as well as marriage and motherhood. Challenges and struggles of women like infanticide, dowry, rape, domestic violence and more were highlighted and films focussed on women like Patti Smith, Madonna, and Amy Winehouse were screened.

This time around, besides the movie screenings, Osianama also plans to organise a series of Masterclasses that will see question-answer sessions and discussions about movies and the theme with Saeed Mirza, Pritish Nandy, Tinnu Anand and more. Actor Naseeruddin Shah too is billed to host his first public acting masterclass at the festival.

With the aim of putting the festival on the map of world cinema, Osianama already has more plans up its sleeve for the coming months. The festival will soon be dealing with themes like culture and creative freedom in October this year, India’s architectural heritage in December and Hollywood and humour in February next year.