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When a coffee table book about the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) was released a few years ago, it celebrated the many illustrious men who had passed through its gates. But it featured only a sprinkling of women.
That absence — along with the news of the girls’ hostel at FTII being demolished, erasing a rare women’s space in a male-dominated campus — spurred three alumni to act.
In a beautiful gesture, the three alumni, unsurprisingly all women, created a digital space to document the stories of all the women — about 600 of them in over six decades — who have graced the institute. Film editor Bina Paul, documentary filmmaker Reena Mohan, and filmmaker Surabhi Sharma conceived and executed ‘A room of our own’ through a lot of challenges, worst of all the outbreak of COVID-19. But in a few years, they managed to put together 50 interviews, and showcase the work and stories of these women.
Thirteen films of these women — shorts reflecting their time at the FTII — are part of a package at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), beginning on August 22. Organised by the Kerala Chalachitra Academy, the festival will run for six days at the Kairali theatre complex in Thiruvananthapuram.
“It is not about awards or how many films the women made, it is about their journey. It is a memory archive project. Women come to cinema through many battles, and there are many more to wage after they come. It is a very gendered space. About 600 women have graduated from the institute so far, and still, even now, female students are asked, why do you want to be a cameraperson, you are anyway going to be married,” says Bina Paul, who has been part and parcel of the film festivals of Kerala for nearly all the editions.
This is the 17th edition of the IDSFFK, which will begin by honouring acclaimed documentary filmmaker Rakesh Sharma with Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, he made his most notable documentary, Final Solution, on the 2002 Gujarat riots. It won him a Special Jury Award at the National Film Awards. The film was initially banned by the Central Board of Film Certification, but later a revising committee cleared it without a single cut.
In the festival that runs from August 22 to August 27, there will be 332 films from 52 countries. This includes the competition and focus sections for short films and documentaries, long documentaries, and campus films. Music videos and international films will also have separate categories.
The opening film, to be screened on the evening of August 22, is From Ground Zero — a collection of 22 shorts, telling the untold stories about the ongoing war in Gaza, initiated by Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi. There is also a section for five Palestinian films titled ‘Ode to Resilience’.
Another curated package is the premiere of ‘Election Diaries’, featuring six films covering the general elections of 2024, which had brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi back to power for a third time. The section is curated by documentary filmmaker Lalit Vachani and Professor at the University of Gottingen Srirupa Roy.
“There is a general impression that the IDSFFK carries mostly only political films, but there are categories that satisfy different tastes. There is an animation package in collaboration with the Annecy Festival, which is the biggest one for animation films. Another package to look forward to is ‘Soundscapes’, related to music, with films about John Lennon and Yoko and Madonna, and a historical film [Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat] linking jazz music to decolonisation. There is also a cartoon based package, adapted from graphic novels. And of course, there is political content too. There is something for everyone,” says H Shaji, Deputy Director of the Chalachitra Academy.
There are also tribute sections, one for the centenary of India’s celebrated filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak. Another will pay tribute to legendary filmmaker David Lynch who passed away this year, with seven of his shorts in a segment called ‘Dynamic’.
Shaji says that the IDSFFK comes off as a “poor cousin” of the much celebrated International Film Festival in Kerala (IFFK), which happens every December. “But this is a young and energetic festival, bringing about 200 filmmakers from across India. It is a space that celebrates fiction and nonfiction and every genre of films.”