Hidden Gems Film Festival (HGFF) is a not-for-profit organization in Calgary bringing art house cinema from India’s underground to this city. The first of its kind and the only festival of Indian art-house films in Canada, the Hidden Gems Film Festival prides itself in discovering the ‘undiscovered treasures’ from the depths of the Indian film industry and bringing them to the cinephiles in Calgary.
Established in 2009, the festival started with an aim of presenting a slice of the plethora of emerging talent of filmmakers in Indian entertainment. The brain behind the Festival is Niru Bhatia, a cine lover with a penchant for good thought-provoking cinema regardless of language or origin. She was displeased at how the big film festivals leaned towards the well-known banners and showcased only the popular fashionable names in the industry while the innate fresh talent of independent cinema was getting sidelined. It was this frustration that gave birth to Hidden Gems Film Festival.
In less than two months from ideation, Niru’s passion and determination brought to fruition a feat that has been deemed impossible by many a stalwart in the Indian Film Festival circles. A festival of unconventional, avant-garde films which would give the Calgarians an insight into the emerging parallel Indian Cinema. In its first year the festival presented six movies in five different languages with English subtitles, which is a remarkable achievement as this feat was accomplished on sheer goodwill and dedication of the volunteers who rallied behind Niru. The Calgarians proved that they were a discerning audience and the response was tremendous. Encouraged by this overwhelming response the second year showed seven feature-length movies in four different languages and three shorts in three more languages.
In its third year now, the Festival this year will promote new talent and present entertaining movies as well as documentaries that will give a diverse yet interesting perspectives on several remarkable topics. The Festival hopes to expand the audience for Indian films and show that Indian cinema is more than Bollywood. This year the organizers’ introduce several new interesting features to the five-day event -Viewer’s choice awards through public voting, discussion forums and audience interactive sessions with the directors and producers about their films.
As a precursor and a curtain raiser to the 2011 edition of the festival, there is a one of showing of a very intense Australian movie – The Waiting City in February.
To add to this, in May 2011, to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, Hidden Gems Film Festival will hold two special screenings of movies based on his stories.
The Hidden Gems Film Festival is devoted to bringing independent and ingenuous art films from across India to a cross-cultural audience with the intention of exchange between the film lovers from all walks of life. As the mandate rightfully dictates – the festival promises to promote, support, educate and advocate the cultural fabric of India by displaying the various gems that lie hidden and buried in its diversity.
No comments:
Post a Comment