Date:13/10/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2007/10/13/stories/2007101350960200.htm

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Poetry on a roll!

Curtain Raiser Sadho Poetry Film Fest starts this evening

Rhythm and Blues Stills from “Apni Bitiya Ke Liye Ek Kavita” and “Buddha And Other Beings”

Delhi will see a film festival with a difference this weekend. Called Sadho Poetry Film Fest, this first-of-its-kind festival in this part of world will feature films inspired by poems, from different parts of the world.

Filmmaker Kavita Bahl, Sadho Trustee, whose two films will be showcased during the festival informs, “Sadho is a non-profit organisation founded by writers and artistes for the promotion of poetry. It aims at taking great poetry to people from all walks of life, through the innovative use of arts, media, technology and social action.”

The festival has two avatars, one is the main festival showcasing all the selected films in Delhi. It will be followed by a travelling fest in 2008, which will travel to 20 venues in India and abroad. “We have got 85 entries from 23 countries. The poets include the Chinese poets from 6th Century BC to modern poets like Rilke, Sylvia Plath and EE Cummings,” says Kavita.

The inspiration

For some films poems are inspiration, for others it’s the visuals which came first and looked to resemble or interpreting some poetry. Talking about her films, Kavita says, “My films Buddha And Other Beings (co-directed with Nandan Saxena) and Ruminations On A Hollow Cylinder are inspired by haikus of 17th and 18th Century Japanese poets like Basho, Issa and Buson. Now Ruminations…based on bamboo cultivation was shot first and then we discovered that the visuals are quite poetic. Like in one of Basho’s haiku goes like this: the warbler sings, among new shoots of bamboo, of coming old age. Visuals of flowering of bamboo, which flowers once in fifty years and dies and open door of cage fit with the haiku.”

Among the other Indian entries are filmmaker-animator Sidharth Pratap Singh’s Apni Bitiya Ke Liye Ek Kavita, where in he has visualised a Hindi poem by Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena. Then there is Ya Devi by photographer-painter Amtojh Sandhu portraying the philosophical essence of an ancient Sanskrit prayer and Songs of Resistance, by Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasanker depicting the contexts, struggle and poetry of a group of Tamil women poets.

Kavita says five films have been made part of Sadho Poetry film Project. “It is a kind of hand holding thing where Sadho will act as mediator between poets and filmmakers.” The films will be showcased at Alliance Francaise, Lodhi Estate from 4.30 pm to 8.30 pm on 13th and 14th October.

ANUJ KUMAR