Art connect: India's major art events prepare to 'celebrate life'

Shubigi Rao, curator of fifth Kochi-Muziris Biennale beginning on December 12, with Kochi Biennale Foundation president Bose Krishnamachari.

The much-needed steps to instill confidence and inspire a whole society besieged by an unprecedented pandemic may finally come from the arts. Major contemporary art and film festivals in the country are working through barriers necessitated by the coronavirus crisis to "celebrate life".

The art is stepping up to do what it does best - connect communities and make sense of what is happening around us.

Among the major art events that would be going ahead with their editions this year are the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa and the Dharamshala International Film Festival. Festival managements are contemplating physical and digital components to kickstart community engagement, and more importantly, the art and entertainment industry debilitated by the health emergency.

Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, directors of Dharamshala International Film Festival launching on October 29.

India's biggest contemporary art event, Kochi-Muziri Biennale, will kick off on its traditional opening day, December 12. Last month, Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) announced the first list of participating artists for the fifth edition of the biennale. Curated by Singapore-based artist Shubigi Rao, the 120-day event will witness seminars, film screenings, workshops and performances in Fort Kochi and the mainland Kochi.

Art antidote

"The pandemic has and is causing immense distress and calamity all over the world, which countries are slowly coping with and healing from. I am of the belief that art plays an important role in this very process of coping and healing," says Bose Krishnamachari, artist and president of KBF. Themed In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire, the biennale in December is likely to be the first major international art event in India since the coronavirus crisis paralyzed life across the world.

The first list of participating artists includes leading Indian artists Arpita Singh and Vasudevan Akkitham, Thao Nguyen Phan (Vietnam), Thuma Collective (Myanmar), Zina Saro-Wiwa (Nigeria), DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency), Palestine, and Ali Cherri (Lebanon).  "With the coming of the coronavirus, we as a people have had to reassess how we interact with our natural and social worlds, rethink the way we've been going about our lives for so long - art can help articulate a lot of this thinking," says Krishnamachari, who co-curated the first edition of the biennale in 2012.

Kamal (fourth from right), chairman of Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, which organises International Film Festival of Kerala.

"As a bulwark against despair the biennale as commons may seem an impossible idea. But we remember the ability of our species, our communities, to flourish artistically even in fraught and dire situations, with a refusal in the face of disillusionment to disavow our poetry, our languages, our art and music, our optimism and humour," says Rao in her curatorial note.

Hybrid festival

Late June, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar launched the official poster of the 51st International Film Festival of India, Goa, scheduled for November 20-28. The delegate-oriented festival is expected to be a hybrid event this year with a mix of physical and digital screenings. "A hybrid festival is the only way to move forward under the circumstances," says national award-winning filmmaker Utpal Borpujari, who has curated films from the North-East region in previous editions of IFFI.

"Hosting a film festival is necessary because it is the only way to give a platform to independent cinema in our country," explains Borpujari, who directed Ishu, which won the Best Assamese Feature Film national award in 2018. "Independent filmmakers have suffered badly in this crisis and they need institutional support," he adds. "Everybody looks forward to IFFI because it showcases the Indian Panorama for the best feature and non-feature films made in the last one year."

The Dharamshala International Film Festival, which has drawn international attention with its imaginative selection and programming since its first edition in 2012, will be launching the event on October 29. "A lot of preparations are required for this year," says festival director and filmmaker Ritu Sarin. "We need to secure the films from privacy because of digital screenings," adds Sarin, who co-directed The Sweet Requiem, which premiered at the Toronto festival in 2018. The festival has extended the deadline for submissions by three weeks to August 30 to help filmmakers struggling with post-production.

"The response is very good. We have received lots of entries and several short films," says Sarin. "The festival team felt it was very important to continue the festival at a time like this. We have to keep the audience engaged. It is more important than ever before," adds Sarin. Last year, the festival moved back to its venue in Dharamshala from Mcleodganj, and improved film projection. Previous attendees at the festival include Oscar-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia and Omerta director Hansal Mehta.

Community engagement

The hugely popular International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) in Thiruvananthapuram and the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival have both opted for postponing their 2020 editions to 2021. The IFFK, which curtailed its 2018 festival because of the devastating floods in the state, will be looking for an early 2021 edition. "The state government's stance is to organise the festival once the cinemas open in the state," says Kamal, the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy chairman and award-winning director.

With the uncertainty over return of cinemas and mammoth preparations involved in an international festival, the Chalachitra Academy, which organises IFFK, expects the festival to happen before April next year instead of its original December schedule. "We had several plans for this year," says Kamal, who directed the Kamala Das biopic Aami (2018). "We will soon start preparations for an early 2021 festival." Last year, IFFK had 14,000 registered delegates, making it the biggest public festival in Asia. The Chalachitra Academy has stepped in to support workers such as technicians, light boys and drivers in the state's film industry under the state government's decision to extend grants to artists. The Academy has given financial assistance worth Rs 2.75 crore so far. "The film industry is in a huge crisis," says Kamal.

Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival Artistic Director Smriti Kiran.

The Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) announced early August that the 22nd edition of Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, scheduled to take place during November 5-12, has been postponed to 2021. The festival will, however, release an official selection of Indian films to support filmmakers later this month. "The health and safety of everyone is the topmost priority right now," says Smriti Kiran, Artistic Director of MAMI and Mumbai Film Festival.

"It was a very difficult decision to postpone the festival to next year but it is a responsible and necessary decision. Our effort will be to ensure that filmmakers don’t suffer anymore than they already are. We will work towards creating as many opportunities as we can create for them," says Kiran. "Certain things are clear to us. Nobody can replicate or replace the theatre experience. That is not going anywhere, it will come back when the world starts to get back on its feet."

The Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival was among the world's 21 leading film festivals that came together two months ago for the ten-day virtual We Are One global film festival organised by Tribeca festival and YouTube. "It was incredible collaborating with the best festivals in the world. We wanted to give visibility to Indian films. It was very important to curate films relevant to India at this moment," says Kiran, who curated the MAMI selection of four films -- Eeb Allay Ooo! by Prateek Vats, Arun Karthick's Nasir, Natkhat (short film) by Shaan Vyas and Atul Mongia's Awake (short film) -- for We Are One festival held during May 29-June 7.

"It was the first online global festival. We wanted to put out some of the best filmmaking in India out there," adds Kiran. With cinemas closed from March, MAMI has been working towards creating a community of audience as well as filmmakers and film industry professionals. The initiatives include an online screening programme, MAMI Year Round Programme Home Theatre, and an online knowledge series called Dial M For Films.

"Even though it doesn't have the same intimacy as the in-person experience, the learning is the same and reaches out to people outside Mumbai. The reach is limitless and that is the realisation we have arrived at. In the light of the festival moving to next year, we will be launching a new set of online initiatives in addition to the existing ones starting September. The incredible takeaway of this unfortunate situation is that our digital imprint needs to stay even after the on-ground experience comes back into our lives," says Kiran.

Faizal Khan curated India’s first football films festival with artist Riyas Komu at the 2011 International Film Festival of India, Goa. He was the curator of a football films programme in the Artists Cinema section of the second Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014.