The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Tricontinental Film Festival: the world on the big screen

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Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007
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Karnataka - Bangalore

Tricontinental Film Festival: the world on the big screen

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: Breakthrough Building Human Rights Culture and Bangalore Film Society are organising their Tricontinental Film Festival featuring a host of films from Asia, Africa and the Americas. The event will be held on November 15, 16, 26 and 27 at Ashirvad on St. Mark’s Road. The films will be screened on all days from 4.15 p.m. to 8.30 p.m., and admission is free.

Lined up for the fest are works such as “Favela Rising,” a Brazilian film documenting a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united; “Hearts and Minds,” an American documentary by Peter Davis, which unflinchingly confronts the United States’ involvement in Vietnam; and an Indian film called “John & Jane” directed by Ashim Ahluwalia, which follows the stories of six “call agents” who answer American 1-800 numbers in a Mumbai call centre. The Swedish film “Leila Khaled Hijacker,” the Canadian film “Return to Kandahar” by Nelofer Pazira and Paul Jay and “Our America,” a join Swiss-Nicaraguan film directed by Kristina Konrad are also on the festival agenda. The last film looks at the lives of women who took up arms during the Nicaraguan revolution and in the fight against the US-funded Contras, and how they now struggle to survive today.

“The Rockstar and the Mullahs” is from the United Kingdom, directed by Ruhi Hamid and Angus Macqueen. It tracks Salman Ahmad, a pop musician from Pakistan and the lead singer of the band Junoon. Salman’s quest takes him across the breadth of Pakistan into the Islamic schools, the madrassas, and eventually to Peshawar, where the local government has banned the playing of music in public. Salman’s final meeting with the city’s leading Mullah is both civil and hysterical, revealing the deep contradictions within modern Pakistani society.

“Sisters in Law” by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi is an often hilarious look at the work of one small courthouse in South West Cameroon. “Ask Me, I’m Positive” is from South Africa and Lesotho, a work about Thabo, Thabiso and Moalosi as young, urban Basotho men on a mission.

The German film by Thomas Wartmann, “Between the Lines: India’s Third Gender”, follows photographer Anita Khemka as she sets out to explore the hijra subcultures of BombayCall 98862-13516 or 94800-90128 for additional information.

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