PSBT’s 13th Open Frame International Film Festival

12092013

 

Posted on September 12, 2013 by sagarmedia

 

PSBT’s 13th Open Frame International Film Festival focuses on narratives of and by women, which foreground women’s experiences and embody a wide range of issues that require critical engagement, individually and collectively. As an organisation and movement committed to using the documentary form to raise concerns that matter, we consider this an urgent, if recurring, need.

 

Through the Festival, we hope to encourage conversations and discussions in an Indian context, especially in the light of the renewed public discourse around violence against women. An analysis of the lived realities and experiences of women, across space and time, as individuals, groups, political subjects and citizens, will facilitate reflection on the visible and invisible structures that create, sustain and perpetuate unequal systems of power, access and control. They will help recognise the interrelated nature of women’s marginalisation, across the multiple identities they inhabit and negotiate.

 

We explore feminisms, patriarchy, gender stereotypes, sexuality, violence, virginity, labour, reproductive rights, desire, disability, political organisation, media representation, misogyny, religion, relationship with the state and more. From the intensely personal and moving narratives of women to the documentation of their deeply held solidarities, across real and imagined borders and differences, the context is varied, rich, warm and exhilarating. The Films will stir us, make us happy, sad, proud and sometimes uncomfortable.

 

We celebrate women’s creativity and the unique perspectives and richness they bring to the art they create. We celebrate some of the most fabulous women this world has ever known and the power of women coming together. We acknowledge the role they have played in ensuring that so many of us can live with freedom, dignity and choice.

 

We examine why a large number of women, beneficiaries of their foremothers’ struggles, are weary and skeptical of embracing the very praxis that has won them their freedoms. We invite men in particular to examine and understand ways in which their actions, in inactions, deny women their rights as human beings.

 

We invite our audience to watch, agree, disagree, debate, learn, unlearn, feel moved, surprised, challenged and most importantly, question, inherited modes of being and thinking. For almost every injustice, inequality and oppression in some part of the world, a struggle is being waged and alliances being forged. We wish to salute, celebrate, bring to attention and lend a voice, albeit small, to some of these struggles. We hope our audience will feel inspired to learn more about them, embrace them and see the world in a new light!

 

This is not a Festival on women’s issues. It is a Festival about the world we create for ourselves and those who follow, a world where we take responsibility for our thoughts and actions