HYDERABAD FILM CLUB
MARCH 2019 – PROGRAMME
At Sri Sarathi Studios Preview Theatre, Ameerpet
Iranian International Award winning Director Ebrahim Hatamika will be presenting his Crystal Simorgh winning movie
05 -03-2019 5.00 p.m. DAMASCUS TIME
Tuesday (Iran/2018/109 mins.)
Followed by an interactive session with the Director
Please note: Film screening starts at 05.00 p.m.
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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S FILM FESTIVAL-2019
On the occasion of International Women’s Day
Friday, 08-03-2019, 6.00 pm
Inaugural function followed by screening of films
1. Period End of Sentence, Oscar Award winning Indian Documentary, 2018, 25 mins. Dir. Rayka Zehtabchi
2. Aua, Kazakhstan, 2018, 14 mins. Dir. Aizhana Kassymbek.
3. Like the Sun, Egypt, Short Fiction, 2017, 24 mins., Dir. Hana Mahmoud.
4. Bokul, India, Assamese, Feature, 2015, 99 mins., Dir. Reema Borah.
Saturday, 09-03-2019, 6.00 pm
1. Leeches, India, Hindi, Short fiction, 2016, 27 mins.. Dir. Payal Seth.
2. Blank Page, Russia, Short Fiction, 2016, 30 mins., Dir. Aina Meredova.
3. Raging Royan, France, Short Fiction, 48 mins., Dir. Doris Lanzmann.
4. Third Bank of the River, India, Malayalam, Feature, 2017, 62 mins.,
Dir. Fowzia Fathima.
Sunday, 10-03-2019, 6.00 pm
1. Bou (Bride), Malaysia-Myanmar, Docu., 2017, 29 mins.
Dir. Mahi Ramakrishna.
2. Women Prayed & Preyed Upon, India, Bengali-Hindi, Docu-Drama, 2017,
30 mins. Dir. Kankana Chakraborty.
3. Mishing (The Apparition), India, Sherdukpen, Feature, 2018, 75 mins.
Dir. Bobby Sharma.
4. Krishnabibor, India, Bengali, Feature, 2018, 62 mins., Dir. Piyali Shome
PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE
(India/2018/Documentary/25 mins.)
Director : Rayka Zehtabchi, Stars : Ajeya, Anita, Gouri Choudari
In a rural village outside Delhi, India, women lead a quiet revolution. They fight against the deeply rooted stigma of menstruation. “Period. End of Sentence.” — a documentary short directed by Rayka Zehtabchi — tells their story. For generations, these women didn’t have access to pads, which lead to health problems and girls missing school or dropping out entirely. But when a sanitary pad machine is installed in the village, the women learn to manufacture and market their own pads, empowering the women of their community. They name their brand “FLY,” because they want women “to soar.” Their flight is, in part, enabled by the work of high school girls half a world away, in California, who raised the initial money for the machine and began a non-profit called “The Pad Project.”
Won the Oscar Award-2019 – Best Documentary film.
AUA (Air)
(Kazakhstan/2018/Short Fiction/14 mins.)
Director : Aizhana Kassymbek
“Can we just throw grandpa away somewhere?“ A young boy who dreams of becoming a pilot someday is taking care of his grandpa on another boring day—until that question. What choice will he make? Or what choice can he make? A sad story about a boy stuck between what he wants to do and what he needs to do.
LIKE THE SUN
(Egypt/2017/Short Fiction/24 mins.)
Director : Hana Mahmoud
BOKUL
(India-Assamese/2015/Feature/99 mins.)
Directors : Reema Borah, Reema Borah
Stars : Ankita Borah, Anupam Borah, Nirab Das |
Thirty-year-old Raktim comes back to his town to attend his sister’s wedding and is struck by the changes that the place has gone through during his absence of five years. He also realizes that his old music teacher is missing, and sets off on a search to find him. In this search he comes across three characters – an old lonely fisherman who spends his last days in the memory of his only son, a young rickshaw-puller who is bravely fighting off communal prejudice to take care of his family, and a single mother who runs her shop independently.Coincidentally, each of these characters are named Bokul – and Raktim shares their personal journeys in the narrative, that leads him to the final truth.
LEECHES
(India-Hindi/2016/Short Fiction/27 mins.)
Director : Payal Sethi
Writers : Samir Patil, Payal Sethi
Stars : Sherin Bhatt, Preeti Golacha, Sayani Gupta
Raisa lives with her Ammi and three younger sisters in Hyderabad’s Old City. When Ammi promises her 13-year old daughter, Zainab, in marriage to a foreign businessman, Raisa decides that she must save her little sister. In a custom that has found new roots among poor families in Muslim ghettos, rich patrons pay for an arrangement brokered by efficient agents, while a pliant cleric draws up both marriage and divorce contracts simultaneously, so that the businessman is free to end the sham union whenever he is ready to leave the city. Desperate to find a way out for Zainab, Raisa hatches a dangerous and irreversible plan involving an archaic remedy that promises to restore a girl’s virginity.
BLANK PAGE
(Russia/2015/Documentary/30 mins.)
Director : Aina Meredova
Grisha, a young nomad of tundra admiring classical music and hungry for knowledge, is haunted perennial question: the sense of human’s existence. In his attempts to understand who he is and why he walks the earth, he decides to write a book about the search of meaning of life. Observing his family and people around him, he try to expose the truth which is alien to them. They all are absorbed by daily routine and procuring everyday bread.The movie shows traditional way of living of tenet people who are slowly getting extinct.
RAGING ROYAN
(France/2018/Short Film/48 mins.)
Director : Doris Lanzmann
Raging Royen is a portrait of a family confronted by its visceral desire for freedom. André, the father, no longer has a taste for anything. To feel free to be and to desire, he must rid himself of his money. Miss Canine, a financial dominatrix, drags him away from his everyday hypocrisy. Doubts about his double life slowly take over his wife and daughter. Rediscovered lucidity has a price. Behind the utopian world of seaside resorts, this lucidity spreads like a virus and pulls back the curtain on appearances.
THIRD BANK OF THE RIVER
(India-Malayalam/2017/Feature/62 mins.)
Director : Fowzia Fathima
The film “Nadhiyude Moonnam Kara” is an adaptation of the famous short story “The Third Bank of the River” by Joao Guimaraes Rosa. It is a story about a boy whose father decides to take a most unusual journey into the river. The father’s reasons are unknown. He may be seeking a greater truth, such as the secret of eternity, or he may be insane, or even dead and traveling to the afterworld. In the never-ending search of the son for his father, it was possible to notice that, besides his willingness to replace him, there was a clear head-triad in the short story: father, son, and river.
Even though the story is narrated by the son in the original text, the life incidents are presented from the point of view of the daughter in the film. The expressive flow of the river, the lives of the family which is bonded to the river, the pain and anguish of the son, the sense of mystery, the abstract and at the same time captive nature of the story, all are explored cinematically.
BOU (Bride)
(Malaysia-Myanmar/2017/Docu./29 mins.)
Director : Mahi Ramakrishnan
Bou (bride) is a documentary that looks at the buying and selling of young Rohingya girls who are forced to flee Burma due to persecution by the military. The film also delves into the minds of the Rohingya men in Malaysia as a way of trying to understand why they commission and buy these children as child brides.
Mahi Ramakrishnan:
Mahi Ramakrishnan is a multiple award winning filmmaker and investigative journalist. She has worked with both television and print media including the BBC, Time magazine, Al Jazeera, USA Today and Voice of America (VOA).
She has been doing investigative documentaries over the last twelve years, working on subjects such as trafficking, migrant workers, refugees and statelessness, child brides, underaged sex industry and the LGBT community.Her latest documentary, Bou (bride), has won her seven international awards so far in Europe, India and the US.
Mahi uses her documentaries to create awareness and push for progressive policies in Malaysia and Southeast Asia through collaboration with Malaysian and regional Parliamentarians.Mahi is also an activist and works to promote and protect the rights of refugees through her NGO, Beyond Borders.She founded an annual Refugee Festival in 2016 (the first of its kind in Asia), which creates an opportunity for the voices of the refugees to be heard and also continues to build bridges between the refugee communities and the Malaysian society.
WOMEN PRAYED AND PREYED UPON
(India-Bengali/Hindi/2013/Docu./30 mins.)
Director : Kankana Chakraborty
Writer : Kankana Chakraborty
Stars : Amitabh Bachchan, Shyam Benegal
Women prayed & Preyed Upon is a 30-minute Docu-drama that spotlights Violence against women. Ironically, in a country where men pray to Goddesses (Maa Kali, Maa Durga among others), why do they Prey upon women? Thesubject tackled is a contradiction and paradox that leaves us perplexed when faced with reality.
The documentary tries to highlight on every kind of violence that a woman faces from even before they are born till the moment they die. Some of the victims wanted their stories told, but were afraid to be on camera, so those moments are enacted.The Docu-drama features various Indian film industry legends (Shri. Amitabh Bachchan, Shri. Shyam Benegal, Smt. Surekha Shikri, Mahesh Manjrekar, Usha Uthup among others.
It has received several National and International recognitions (Socially Relevant film festival NYC, Global Impact Film Festival, Mumbai Women’s Film Festival, California Women’s Film Festival, Docs Without Borders Film Festival, Sydney International Film Festival among others).Its recent achievement is the Official Selection at the World Peace Award- Indonesia.
MISHING (The Appariton)
(India, Shenukpen/2018/Feature/75 mins.)
Dir. Bobby Sharma.
Togbe Mahajan, a leading member of the Sherdukpen community of Arunachal Pradesh, meets a driver Radha Binode Singh after buying a used vehicle in Assam. When the two men return to Togbe’s village, Singh reveals that he is an Army deserter. Tog be arranges fresh identity papers for his driver. The outsider stays on in his adopted home and becomes a part of the family.
The driver also develops a relationship with Maya, a Sherdukpen widow. He has a brush with Mishing, a local belief that the spirits of dying people can appear before those they love and communicate with them. One day, Singh sees himself dead at the wheels of his own car. Alarmed and baffled, he flees.
Many years later, Abu, Togbe’s son, receives a middle-aged visitor. He reveals that he is Radha Binode Singh. Reminiscing about bygone days, he asks Abu to visit him in Guwahati and collect a precious object that Togbe left in his custody. He then disappears without a trace.Abu heads to Guwahati. There, he meets Singh’s son. The latter hands over Togbe’s possession to the visitor. Abu learns that Singh has been in a hospital in Vellore, southern India, for several months. Who, then, was the man who visited Abu?
KRISHNA BIBOR (The Black Hole)
(India-Bengali/2018/Feature/75 mins.)
Director : Piyali Shome
It is the film based on the brutal truth of the incidents of child sexual harassment, molestation in India. In India everyday child abuse rate is very high but very few are reported under POCSO act in India as sometime it’s for the social issues for which parents hide the truth and sometime that child victim couldn’t identify her rapist or she didn’t even understand that she is getting molested because of less maturity but can feel something very bad happened to her, also the cause is less awareness about it as no such sex education or counseling system is there in India yet which can make them feel the difference of ”Good touch and Bad touch”. After getting older & mature when she became aware of it and want a punishment of her rapist, no Indian law is still there to punish her childhood rapist after so many years passed.. Here an urban lady came back to her village from city to take the revenge from her childhood rapist and some more incidents happened to her. Beside this sensitive issue our film portray some more sensitive issues like illegal sex determination, demand of a boy child and the most rare issue about an autistic person who feel his sexual desire lately and which is very normal but hated by society. The universe will ultimately meet The Black Hole one day, our story also met the\is ultimatum Black Hole at the end.
