Film South Asia 2005 begins

Scenes from Matir Moina (L) and Karnaphulir Kanna

In addition to promoting interregional communication and the non-fiction genre, this year's festival also seeks to comment on the great transformation that has been taking place in the world of cinema. With the theme Revolution in Digital-Go Documentary! FSA is acknowledging the changes that have occurred since the advent of digital technology. With the affordability and relative ease of such technology, a much wider variety of people have the opportunity to tell their story through cinematic language.

The digital revolution is a particularly appropriate theme for this year, since the FSA is undergoing some dramatic changes of its own, many of which benefit those outside Nepal who would like to join the festival. The venue has been changed to a modern downtown duplex called Kumari Cinema, which will accommodate all who are interested in attending the screenings.

This year's jurors are Hasan Zaidi, Pakistani filmmaker and co-creator and current director of the Kara Film Festival in Karachi, Sabeena Gadihoke, a senior grade lecturer of video and television production at Mass Communications Research Center Jama Millia Islamia in New Delhi, and renowned Bangladeshi filmmaker Tareque Masud, the director of Matir Moina (The Clay Bird). The keynote speaker on the opening night is Sai Paranjpye, Lucknow-born writer, producer, playwright, and director of such films as Sparsh and Katha. Past jurors have included Calcutta filmmaker Goutam Ghose, former BBC South Asia Correspondent Sir Mark Tully, and Dhaka-based classical dancer Lubna Marium, while past keynote speakers have included Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, director of Naam, Junoon, Chaahat, and many more.

Some of the Bangladeshi entries in the festival include A Certain Liberation by Yasmine Kabir, which chronicles the grief and eccentricities of Gurudasi Mondol, whose entire family was killed before her eyes during the Liberation War in 1971, and Tanvir Mokammel's Karnaphulir Kanna (Teardrops of Karnaphuli), a film on the struggles of the marginalised people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Both the filmmakers will be attending the festival and will be present at their respective screenings.

Kabir is no stranger to the festival; she was the winner of the festival's top prize, the Ram Bahadur Trophy, at FSA '01. There is also German-based filmmaker Shaheen Dill-Riaz's The Happiest People in the World, which explores on a more personal level the veracity of a London School of Economics' study finding that the happiest people in the world could be found in Bangladesh.

The author is a freelance writer