The second day of the JD Centre of Art’s 12th International Film Festival on Art and Artist on Saturday was also full of exciting contents including screenings of multiple award-winning films, two workshops, and the continuation of exhibitions on Odia handicrafts.
The day began with the screening of Atul by filmmaker Kamal Swaroop. After the screening, Swaroop had a question-answer session about the film with the audience. Meanwhile, Delhi-based award-winning filmmaker Nandan Saxena was back for the eighth time for his much-loved series of workshops on filmmaking, this time titled Cinematic Films on a Budget: Digital Filmmaking, where he spoke about the parallels between literature and cinematography.
The day was packed with a variety of stunning films that included Oscar-winning Iranian film, the Salesman by Asghar Farhadi; Kamal Swaroop’s Atul, on artist Atul Dodiya; award-winning American film maker Tom Lowe’s stunning time-lapse film, Timescapes; Russian film maker, Smirnov Igor’s Wooden Temples of the Leningrad Region, which was presented by the producer of the film, Elena Smirnova and OP Srivastava’s film on renowned film maker, Girish Kasaravalli.
Canadian artist Bryan Mulvihill’s workshop on calligraphy, Imaging the Word, demonstrated calligraphic techniques and talked about transforming text into artistic expression.
The day ended with the monthly edition of JDCA’s Meet the Artist Series. The session was a commemorative presentation of the life and work of renowned Odia filmmaker, late Nirad Mohapatra. The discussion included his brother, eminent journalist-editor, Sampat Mahapatra, film director Susant Lulu Mishra, film makers and fellow FTII alumni, Kamal Swaroop and Sudhir Tandon, and was moderated by filmmaker Birendra Das. The event concluded with the showing of Nirad Mohapatra’sdocumentary Chhau Dane of Mayurbhanj andwas followed by his iconic feature film, Maya Miriga (The Mirage), which competed in the Cannes Film Festival in 1984 and won Best Third World Film at the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival in Germany the same year. Other films shown today included young Odia film maker, Sanjay Bhatt’s films, one of which was on the renowned veteran Odia artist Jagdish Kanungo.