Urban Lens Film Festival 2017: List of Films to be Screened

The fourth edition of the Urban Lens Film Festival to be held in Bengaluru and New Delhi, remains committed to the idea that cinema allows us a space to reflect and re-examine the cities we live in. In order to open the Urban Lens Film Festival to a greater diversity of films from wider geographical regions, the festival, for the first time, put out a call for entries. The call received an overwhelming response with more than 1600 entries from 102 countries. The 27 films being screened this year include a selection from the open call and a set of invited films. These fiction, non-fiction and animation films mirror a cinematic truth about cities, framing them beyond their skylines by teasing out individual/collective stories and experiences of people from around the world.

In keeping with the mission of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) to engage with cities of the Global South, the festival explores cinematic narratives that emerge from countries such as India, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Jordan and South Africa. The thrust of urbanisation in these countries is unprecedented, giving rise to a sea of striking stories – a couple’s struggle for housing in a crowded city (Ek Ghar), resilience of people in making homes for themselves in an abandoned building in Caracas (Ruina), examining how men and women occupy public space during the day and night (Chasing Tails, Mod and Amdavad Ma Famous), a grandson’s search for the truth about his grandfather in Buenos Aires (70 y Pico), the experience of loneliness in a city (Solito) and the functioning of the real estate mafia in Kochi (Kammatipaadam). In addition, films reflect on the stories of immigrants in Israel and the United States (Journey Birds and and i) and a fantastical imagination of Berlin (Wings of Desire).

On Practice

In this edition of the Urban Lens film festival, we bring you a series of conversations that go into different aspects of cinematic practice. Last year’s edition of the festival featured a discussion with camera persons, and what their practice of framing meant. This year we bring you a set of conversations with directors and editors who will speak about their individual craft, and how it has shaped the work they have produced. In an image-saturated world where proliferation of digital technologies has made cinema production and consumption accessible, it becomes even more important for us to understand what the practice behind filmmaking is, and how it has shaped our cinematic imaginations over time, and continues to even today. From directors Girish Kasaravalli and Rajeev Ravi to editors Bina Paul and Namrata Rao – these set of conversations will try and explore what the process and thought behind their craft is, and their relationship to an ever changing technology. These reflections around their practice is not only meant for cinephiles and students of cinema, but for anyone who is interested in questions around cinematic form
and language. We hope that these set of discussions will lead to a deeper and nuanced understanding of the images and sounds that shape us.

Entry to the festival is free.

List of films to be screened

1 70 y Pico by Mariano Corbacho
2 Amdavad Ma Famous by Hardik Mehta
3 and i by Gabriela Escovar
4 Another World in Your Eyes by Valerie Malek
5 Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love) by Aditya Vikram Sengupta
6 Bokul by Reema Borah
7 Chasing Tails by Tangella Madhavi
8 Distance by Ekta Mittal & Yashaswini Raghunandan
9 Ek Ghar by Girish Kasaravalli
10 Gali by Samreen Farouqui & Shabani Hassanwalia
11 Hamare Ghar by Kislay
12 Home Ground Arunima by Tenzin Tara & Sushil Kumar Pandey
13 Journey Birds by Daphna Awadish
14 Kaaka Koode (Crow’s Nest) by Amritha R Warrier
15 Kammatipaadam by Rajeev Ravi
16 Letters to Nowhere by Aishwarya Iyer, Benazir Baig, Bushra Owaisy, Hanan Muhammed & Shivam Rastogi
17 Looking Through the Fence by Akanksha Gupta & Vasuki Chandak
18 Mod (The Turn) by Pushpa Rawat
19 Noma by Pablo Pinedo
20 Photographs of a School Teacher by Mahde Hasan
21 Ruina by Markus Lenz
22 Sauerbruch Hutton Architekten by Harun Farocki
23 Solito by Eduardo Reis
24 Story of a Sp[eye] by Chan, Chandrakanta Patel, Kavina Patel, Saubhagya &Swati Pathak
25 Watermelon, Fish and Half Ghost by Payal Kapadia
26 Waves by Ahmed Nour
27 Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders