Festival Brochure (Downloadable PDF) - Chao Center for Asian ...

eality or an Indian fantasy. It is to showcase cinema as aform, like any other art form, which cannot and shouldn’tbe confined to the realm of either reality or culture. To put itsimply, good art practice is always in conversation, critical andinterventional toward both the structuring of ‘reality’ and ofnational culture. If this festival celebrates anything, it celebratescinema.‘TITLES3’ continues this promise of celebrating cinema, by showcasingboth recent achievements in cinema from India, and films from thepast that constitutes its legacy. While the filmmakers showcased in the‘Contemporary Cinema’ section represent the best of experimental filmsmade in India, the ‘Masters’ section celebrates a longue durée history.The films by Ashish Avikunthak represent a distinct mode of exploringthe link between the present and its antecedents. Kamal Swaroop’srecent film Rangbhoomi, which traces an unknown part of the life ofDG Phalke (popularly known as the ‘Father of Indian Cinema’), as well asSwaroop’s 1988 cult classic Om Dar B Dar, will be screened at TITLES3,providing us with another site to think through the history of thesepractices. The filmmakers Mani Kaul (whose Duvidha was screenedin 2011) and Kumar Shahani are seen as the forerunners of many anexperimental filmmaker in India. While a re-mastered 35mm print ofKaul’s Siddheswari will be screened, re-mastered versions of Shahani’sFour Chapters and Swaroop’s Om Dar B Dar will be shown digitally.