South Asia’s first Borderless Digital Film Festival kick-starts August 1

Team L&M

Remember the famous Javed Akhtar song from Abhishek Bachchan-Kareena Kapoor debut movie, Refugee – Panchhi, nadiyan, pawan ke jhonke, koi sarhad inhe na roke… Like no borders can limit the flight of birds and the flow of rivers and wind, art can never be limited by boundaries too. To further consolidate these facts, South Asia Forum for Art & Creative Heritage (SAFACH) is organising the first edition of Indus Valley International Film Festival (IVIFF) with the most unique aspect being South Asia’s first Borderless Digital Film Festival with an impressive line-up of films from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and host nation, India.

Beginning tomorrow (August 1, 2020), the nine-day festival will offer a vibrant mix of film screenings, workshops and masterclasses, interactions with celebrities and music concerts for the lovers of cinema. The audience will get a rare opportunity to not only watch the films from the region but interact with eminent directors and the star cast too. In Covid-19 scenario, the first edition will be online and on a onetime registration, audience gets access to the entire festival.

The festival will kick-start with opening remarks by Vishal Bhardwaj with his film Pataakha and end with closing remarks by Nandita Das with her film, Manto. A film by Brahmanand Singh, Jhalki, will also be screened.

“We have a cultural and historical legacy and cinema is the modern medium of expressing continuously evolving our artistic traditions. South Asian art, music and folk traditions are interconnected and they get evolved further through communicating with each other. So, I believe, a popular platform connecting cinema and art practitioners, production houses, studios and creative professionals will immensely benefit the creative economy of South Asia,” shared Harsh Narayan, founder and creative director, IVIFF.

Apart from the movies, there will be many feature and short films which the audience can watch.

Another key attraction of festival will be the workshops and masterclasses by eminent personalities. Author and filmmaker Brahmanand S Singh will be conducting a workshop on Fiction and Documentary Filmmaking; Shahid Nadeem of Ajoka Theatre, Lahore will be steering a masterclass on Theatre Direction & Acting whereas Karachi-based Haider Ali will take a masterclass on modern evolving art form, Truck Art.

The film festival will also host panel discussions on Traditional Arts and Filmmaking in South Asia, a non-political discussion to understand connectivity and continuity of traditional arts with the modern style of filmmaking in South Asian context. It will be attended by prominent filmmakers from across South Asian countries. There will also be online live music concerts during the festival.

For more details, visit www.iviff.com