West Bengal: Film festival that poses difficult questions

KOLKATA: A film festival, focusing on the current social, cultural and political fabric of the country, is being held in the city over the weekend, presenting 14 films. The two-day Anti-Fascist Film Festival at Mahajati Sadan started off on Saturday.
The event is being organised by Bengal Against Fascist RSS-BJP, a forum formed in the run-up to the Bengal assembly polls, and People's Film Collective, a people-funded initiative that screens films and hosts conversations.Musical performances are also being held and Little Magazine stalls set up at the venue. Tribal rights activist Himangshu Kumar and human rights activist Sujato Bhadra were among the speakers on Saturday, while activist and Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan will deliver the keynote address on Sunday.
More than 400 people turned up on the first day, when 'The Social Distance', 'Reason', 'Galiyon ka Shahar', 'Siege in the Air' and 'Lynch Nation' were screened. Anand Patwardhan's 'Reason' examines the conflict between secular rationalists and fundamentalists. "Since Anand's 'Reason' is four-and-a-half hour long, he sent us a festival cut," said Dwaipayan Banerjee, one of the organisers. He, along with Kasturi Basu, co-directed a documentary, 'A Bid for Bengal', which was screened on Saturday.
Aditya Kapoor, in his film 'The Social Distance', narrated a story of four Delhi residents during the peak of the Covid pandemic, while Muntaha Amin in 'Siege in the Air' shared accounts of Kashmiri women after Article 370 was scrapped in August 2019 and the restrictions that followed. Shaheen Ahmed and Ashfaque EJ's 'Lynch Nation', a documentary on cow vigilantism, was shot across UP, Rajasthan, haryana, Gujarat and Jharkhand, telling the story from the perspective of affected families.
The Sunday's line-up begins with the screening of Ritesh Sharma's 'Jhini Bini Chadariya', which narrates the stories of a Muslim weaver, Shahdab, and street dancer, Rani, in Varanasi. "The film captures the love and hate dimensions in the ancient city and how their cultural and political identities come to the fore," said Sharma, who will attend the festival on Sunday. Among other films on Sunday will be Ehraz A Zaman's 'In a Dissent Manner' featuring students involved in the protest at Aligarh Muslim University against CAA. Another film, 'Noor Islam', focuses on the life of a person affected by the NRC in Assam.
"These powerful documentaries and films can challenge the authorities and ask difficult questions," said Kushal Debnath, another organiser of the festival.