Ranchi, Dec. 6: As many as 34 short films, their duration varying from one minute to an hour, will be screened at the three-day film festival, CMS Vatavaran-2006, that opens here on Thursday.
The biennial festival on environment and wildlife is being held at both Hyderabad and Ranchi simultaneously between December 7 and 9. The festival earlier covered seven different cities, including Bangalore, Chennai and Chandigarh.
It is being organised by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), New Delhi, and is being supported by the Union forest and environment ministry, the Jharkhand forest department and local NGO Manthan Yuva Sangsthan.
Another highlight of the festival is a seminar on “Mining and its effect on tribal livelihood”.
Themes of the films cover a wide range of environmental and wildlife topics — from birds seen through a window to compressed natural gas (CNG) to hazards of electronic waste threatening health.
Filmmakers are also from across the country and of different age groups. Rudransh Mathur made Birds Through my Window when he was a student of Class VIII.
Works of several acclaimed filmmakers will be screened here. The work of Syed Fayaz, who has made films for Unicef, Discovery Channel and Channel 4 (UK), will be seen on the second day when “A Brush with Death” is screened.
In the film he has shown how illegal procurement and sale of the common mongoose continues to make the paint brush industry thrive.
Meghnath and Biju Toppo’s collaborative film Iron is Hot deals with the polluting effects of the sponge iron industry that uses coal in the state, unlike gas elsewhere.
A Second Hand Life is an “investigative film that brings to light the grim, murkier side of information technology”. Cute Bunny, an animated film by Dhimant Vyas, won the gold for children’s short film at the Kalamazoo Animation Film Festival and award for best animated film for children in the Zews Animated Film Festival in Latvia in 2003.
Some other famous shorts, including Kanha — Protecting a Paradise by Shekar Dattatri will also be shown. Films by some of Jharkhand’s filmmakers will also be screened.
