Cinema
“Never try to convey your idea to the audience – it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within
themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”
—Andrei Tarkovsky
We believe that the medium of film is one of the most effective media to sensitise us to critical events and issues cutting across divides of class, gender and literacy as it communicates with participants directly through image and sound. Towards this, we organize regular film screenings and discussions on feature and documentary films from across the globe as well as organise film festival and conferences on specific themes such as human rights, women’s rights, indigenous people’s rights, migration and displacement, water and environmental issues, farming and food, and so on. Through these programs we attempt to connect the participants with cultural histories of ideas and desires of social transformations, contentious socio-cultural-political issues of our times as well as provide entertainment and aesthetic experience.
Our initiatives
A critically acclaimed film journal, earlier a bi annual publication, also independently registered it is now being brought out occasionally.
An International Travelling Film Festival initiated by Bangalore Film Society in 2005, aimed to bring together grass-root level water activists, environmentalists, scientists, policy-makers, academicians, scholars, artists, working professionals from all walks of life to engage in a process of learning and debating on various water issues from around the world. Having established its relevance over the last 15 years we have been consistently receiving films for the festival from across the world that underline the global concern for water conservation.
Based on SIEDS’s long term association with the tribal community of the Hakki Pikkis and forest dwelling Iruligas, one of the collective members took the initiative of making a documentary film to capture the unique livelihood choices of this nomadic and enterprising community. Produced by BFS and made along with members of the community the film is the product of a series of conversations with the community across different settlements in Karnataka. The name is derived from the way a popular expression the community uses to describe itself. Some accounts of this process of making and screening the films is shared on the blog.
A documentary film directed by late Chalam Bennurkar who was part of SIEDS, focuses on the plight of young children working in Sivakasi in the late 1980s giving a unique perspective on child labour from the context of the realities of the communities there living in poverty and impacted by negligent goevernment. The film takes its name from the nickname of Sivakasi, (Mini-Japan), a name given to the town for its high technology and business standards and has received several awards.