I View World film fest to be held in Delhi

New Delhi, Feb 24 (IANS) I View World, an international film festival that provides new ways of looking at human rights cinema through the lens of gender, marginalities and contemporary culture, will be held here from March 2-8.

Conceived and convened in New York for several years by Engendered, a transnational arts and human rights organisation, the film festival is making its debut in India this year.

The festival features a lineup of over 30 screenings and a number of established filmmakers and attendees like Mira Nair, Hansal Mehta, Aparna Sen, Manoj Bajpayee, Prakash Jha, Leena Yadav, Radhika Apte,Shweta Tripathi, Monica Dogra, Arpita Chatterjee, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Srijit Mukherjee and Rituparna Sengupta among others.

Ranging from art house/independent to mainstream festival favorites, classics to experimental and avant-garde, to under-the-radar documentaries, I View World will feature a dynamic selection from the entire continuum of World Cinema, over 30 innovative features, shorts and documentaries, along with a number of South Asia's most celebrated and established filmmakers and celebrity attendees.

"In these times of global ferment, entrenched and widening disparities in freedoms, and shrinking spaces for critical thought, I View World brings voices from the world of cinema, media, academia and the development sector on a common platform to create robust conversations using the arts to galvanise, engage, uplift and transform viewer perceptions around issues pertaining to human rights and contemporary culture," Myna Mukherjee, festival director and curator, said in a statement.

Some of the highlights of the festival include international features like Sarah Gavron's "Suffragette", French director Jacques Audiard's "Dheepan", Delhi premiere of Pakistani filmmaker Sarmad Khoosat's critically acclaimed "Manto" along with a retrospective of Mira Nair's feature films "Reluctant Fundamentalist", "Monsoon Wedding", "Mississippi Masala", "The Namesake".

Documentaries and short films like "Words with Gods", "Migration", "9/11", "The Laughing Club of India" will also be screened.

Screening venues include the American Center, the British Council, PVR and others.

In an effort to take these conversations to a wider cross section of audiences, there are two planned campus initiatives at St. Stephen's College and School of Arts and Aesthetics in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).