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CREATING AWARENESS At the film festival

The Ability Foundation, Chennai has been doing yeomen service in helping these physically impaired people and creating an awareness about their needs, through various methods such as special education and medical schemes and cultural programmes. The film festival has been the latest on their anvil.

This year’s edition saw participation from 35 countries with nearly 50 films, both documentary and feature being exhibited during the weekend. The festival saw participation from lots of physically-challenged persons and a good number of students. There was a a competition of one minute films on the topic “celebrating diversity”. The documentaries were instructive; some touching such as “Gregor’s inventions”, “Freedom Machines” and “Nectar”.

However, the most captivating films were the long feature films such as “Iqbal”(Hindi), “Nissabdh” (Bengali), “I Love You” (Japanese), “Margaret Steiff” (German), “Verruckt Nach Paris” (German), “Die Blindganger” (German), “Une Silenzio Particulare” (Italian).

These films reflected deep emotion without melodrama and etched human relationships with craft and sensitivity. Some of the films had physically impaired persons as protagonists. It added a note of poignancy to them.

There were fun films such as “Crazy about Paris”; and the sheer poetry and sensitivity of a film such as “Nissabdh” from a debut film director was remarkable.

To a very great extent Abilityfest 2007 succeeded in showcasing films with realism marked by the tragedies and triumphs that make the lives of the physically impaired.

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