Deconstructing Disasters
A travelling film festival calls for a reality check
indiadisasters.org, the humanitarian website, is organising a film festival from October 1 to 30 across five south Indian cities, with a focus on natural disasters and the response they evoke. The travelling festival, "Deconstructing Disasters", featuring 10 films, will be inaugurated on the seashore of Keechankuppam in Nagapattinam, one of the villages worst hit by the tsunami.
Screenings will be done in collaboration with partner groups in and around Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai and Kanyakumari, followed by discussions with filmmakers at select venues.
Half the films in the festival are on the tsunami, and the other half deal with issues as diverse as recurring floods in Bihar, drought in Orissa and earthquake in Gujarat. While daytime city screenings cover the whole range of films, the village and beach shows will focus more on tsunami rehabilitation.
The festival films feature stories of people coping with disasters even after their lives are torn apart. They address the economics, politics and ecology of disasters. And they show humanitarian agencies' response to disasters and probe their efficacy and the challenges they face. In short, the stress will be on disaster preparedness, rehabilitation, rights and standards.
The festival aims to increase public awareness on natural disasters and rehabilitation, focusing on aspects of preparedness, rights and standards - the core concerns of indiadisasters.org. The website is a venture by a small team of independent professionals from media, humanitarian work and software industry who brought out The India Disasters Report (OUP: 2000). Their latest initiative is the Tsunami Response Watch, a website, and includes a weekly e-newsletter and media inserts in Tamil.
The films for Deconstructing Disasters were selected by a jury comprising filmmakers and journalists, chaired by the national award-winning director Rajeev Nath on September 21 at Thiruvananthapuram Press Club. The selected films are From Chaos to Creativity, Voices from a Disaster, Living on the Edge, Our Life, Our Film, River Taming Mantras, Waves after Waves, Tsunami, Harvest of Hunger, Children of Tsunami and Outside Mercy. See schedule for screening details.
The partners include: Sneha - Nagapattinam, Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation, Bangalore University Department of Adult and Continuing Education, Indian Social Institute - Bangalore, Kerala Independent Fishworkers Federation, Kairali TV, Amrita TV, Chennai NGO Coordination Council, Loyola College - Thiruvananthapuram, Kanyakumari Rehabilitation Resource Centre, Rural Uplift Centre (RUC), Society for Education and Development (SED), and Books for Change.
Central contact:
Coordinator, Deconstructing Disasters
Email: docufest2005@gmail.com
Mobile : +91 98472 84898
For local/ media queries:
Nagapattinam: Revathi Radhakrishnan
(Filmmaker, +91 9444030032)
Bangalore: Max Martin
(Editor, indiadisasters.org: +91 98451 46718)
Thiruvananthapuram: L Ajith
(Coordinator, Deconstructing Disasters: +91 98472 84898)
Chennai: Satya Sivaraman
(Editor - Regional, indiadisasters.org:+91 98402 82680)
Kanyakumari: Johnson Raj
(Director, Kanyakumari Rehabilitation Resource Centre, +91 9443747038)
