Along with many other centres and departments, the Centre for Comparative Literature (CCL), School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad is also celebrating its silver jubilee this year. Keeping this in mind, the centre has formed a body of coordinators and has planned many academic events and activities. Earlier, they had organized a lecture series by Prof. M. V. Narayanan of Calicut University. CCL students and faculty had the opportunity to interact with Prof. Sudipta Kaviraj of Columbia University during a session arranged at the centre while he was in the city a few days ago. The CCL Silver Jubilee committee has planned a year-long series of programmes and the latest one has been the recently-concluded film festival.
The Film Festival titled Reel Emergence: New and Now was organised from August 16th to 18th, 2013 at the Humanities Auditorium and the DST Auditorium on the University campus. On 16th afternoon the Dean, School of Humanities Prof. Amitabha Dasgupta inaugurated the film festival. Prof. Tutun Mukherjee gave a brief on the films that are being screened at the festival.
The film festival focused on the theme ‘Emergence’. Films from emerging movie industries and languages were chosen, emphasizing the ‘new’. Movies released post 2010 from across the globe were screened at the festival and these movies let the audience relate with them in a most intimate manner. The list of films included The Orator (Samoa), Xingu (Brazil), Life, Above All (South Africa), Miracle in Cell No. 7 (Korea), 17 Filles (France), Footnote (Israel), The Secret World of Arriety (Japan), Red Dog (Australia) and three Indian movies – Aadukalam (Tamil Nadu), Phijigi Mani (Manipur) and Gaggara (Tulu).
The film festival was received enthusiastically by the UoH community. It engaged the audience in productive discussion and opening vistas for newer thoughts.
by Abu Saleh, Ph.D. student at CCL