The screenings will take place at SM Joshi College, DY Patil College of Engineering and Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies

Critically acclaimed films, environment awareness programmes and competitions will mark the 14th edition of Kirloskar Vasundhara International Film Festival (KVIFF) which will be held from January 3-7.

At least 45 colleges have joined hands with the film festival that cares about the environment. The screenings will take place at SM Joshi College, DY Patil College of Engineering and Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies. MES Institute of Management & Career Courses (IMCC) will hold a mini festival for its students from January 4-7.

“The idea of the mini film festival is to screen films of shorter duration. The films screened at the mini festival will be five to 30 minutes long and will be screened in half -a-day. This will help pique the interest of the students,” said Virendra Chitrav, festival director, KVIFF.

The students have shown keen interest in environment films and are also eager to participate in various environmentally-related events, hence, the organisers thought of putting up a separate film festival that could allow students to see films in their own campus, added Chitrav.

The mini film festival has all films from India and each of them is interesting. Some of the films in this festival are Save the Dugong, a five-minute film on marine mammal, Dugong. Another film, The guardian and the Deity is about the conflicts between humans and elephants in Assam; Sending Huro home, a film about rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction centre for the Western Hoolock Gibbons will also be screened.

The opening film, The Policing Langur directed by Vijay Bedi and winner of the Green Oscar will be screened on January 3 at Balgandharva Rangmandir at 7 pm. The festival will close with award-winning film The Python Code directed by Andreas Ewels.

Besides this, there will be a retrospective on Vijay Bedi, and also a screening of Interdependence, the most discussed film in IFFI-Goa 2019 on climate change issues.

Vasundhara Sanman

Besides the mini film festival, the KVIFF will also be awarding Vasundhara Sanman to ecologist Debal Deb, a resident of Odisha, who founded Basudha, a small farm near a forest near Muniguda, Odisha. Basudha was established to conserve the vanishing biodiversity of traditional rice varieties, and to encourage, demonstrate and support for organic farming and traditional methods of multiple cropping. Arati Kumar Rao, independent eco-journalist from Bengaluru, Karnataka will also receive this award.