Dear all, well it’s that time of the year again! Lights, camera, ACTION, and welcome to the 5th Auroville Film Festival 2017!
The aim of the Auroville Film Festival is to connect with people and cultures within and beyond Auroville and to further the aspiration of human unity by showcasing films that develop this theme. We feature films that are created in and around Auroville, as well as international films.
The films can be viewed in the following venues: Cinema Paradiso, SAIIER Conference Room, upstairs of the Archive Building, and outside the Town Hall.
There are 4 film categories.
1. Films made BY residents of Auroville and the bio-region: 74
2. Films made ABOUT Auroville: 37
3. Films made BY STUDENTS: 14
4. Films that develop the theme of human unity: 149 from around 40 countries.
see here the screening schedule
3000 films were submitted over the last one and a half years and were screened by 4 brave selection panels!
The screening schedule for the whole festival will be available shortly: with the soft copy of the News and Notes, on Auronet and on our website http://filmfestival.auroville.org. We will also keep a printed copy of the schedule at AVDzines for anyone who wants to xerox it.
This year has a number of FIRSTS!
The festival has been extended to 8 days (Dec 16-23).
You could say that the festival is kicking off Auroville’s 50th birthday celebrations!
And we are celebrating AVFF’17 with our new carbon-neutral program. We tried a new crowdfunding platform where we offered, against donations, the planting of trees that go on capturing CO2 for the life of the tree. Thanks to the donations we received, we will help plant more than 140 trees. We hope this is the beginning of something big in moving towards a carbon-neutral film festival.
We have collaborated with Anveshan, who are organising the Auroville Food Festival – 8 days of orgasmic delight for the palate. You will experience food from different countries/regions and cuisines each night. We are still organising the regions but so far, we have African night, Vegan night, European night, South Indian night, North Indian night, South East Asian (Korea, Japan, China) night, and more to come!
The food will be accompanied by live music and entertainment every evening. The festival will kick off at 5pm on the 16th of December with performances by Swaha’s Blues Band and throughout the week expect to enjoy Yatra Arts play and mime, Ray’s Electric Veena project, Vera and others.
We are organising a Kino Kabaret, where 50 participants will conceive, create and screen their short films all within 2 days. Beginning one day before the opening of the festival and concluding 50 hours later, the Kino Kabaret expects to be a lot of fun. All the Kino Kabaret films will be screened at 7pm on Sunday 17th at the outdoor venue. Registration is still open – kino@auroville.org.in
Having pioneered a live video call with a director in the U.S. during the previous AVFF, we have scheduled 4 more such encounters and 4 discussions where the directors/producer will be present. After the screening of the films, audiences will have the opportunity to share their thoughts directly with the filmmaker and receive an instant reply from as far away as Canada, France and North India.
There will be art installations by Ok, Rrivu and Richa, Marco F, Soham and Orly, which will be peppered throughout the Town Hall area. Centre d’Art Citadines is collaborating with us and will present a special exhibition of paintings by Dominique Jacques imagining designs for stamps in honour of the 50th anniversary of Auroville.
The festival will conclude on Saturday 23rd December at 5pm with the awards ceremony and the re-screening of the winning films will start from 8pm. A DJ set will finish off the night.
This year’s film festival is brought to you by MMC/CP in collaboration with Centre d’Art Citadines and Anveshan.
A special thanks to all the people, units and services who made this event possible!
Volunteers and helpers!! We need you!!!!
aurovillefilmfestival@auroville.org.in
