58 films selected for 2nd Woodpecker Film Festival

• Films on gender, environment, religion & culture, children, forest & wildlife, livelihoods and science & technology to be screened
• The 3-day film festival will be organised at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi form Dec 11-13.
• 16 student films from FTII, Jamia Millia Islamia, TERI, TISS and DU also got selected

New Delhi, Oct 17, 2014: The 2nd edition of Woodpecker Film Festival will screen 58 powerful documentaries and short films on a variety of socio-cultural and environmental issues. Official selections for this year’s edition were announced today. These films have been selected by an 18-member Selection Committee. The 2nd edition of the Woodpecker Film Festival will be organised from Dec 11-13 at India Habitat Centre (IHC), New Delhi.

While announcing the Official Selections today, Festival Director, Narender Yadav said, “In its second year the festival promises to bring the best of Indian cinema focusing on socially important themes. This year we have added another important category – science & technology and there are some wonderful in this segment. It’s really exciting to see the sheer diversity of films, in terms of their themes as well as the geographical areas they are representing, in the festival. With films from more than 12 cities participating in the festival, it shows the growing popularity of the genre of short films & documentaries in different parts of the country.”

Delhi tops with 27 films, Mumbai comes next:

Out of the 58 selected films, 27 are from Delhi, 16 from Maharashtra, 7 from UP and 3 from Haryana. In addition, one film each has been selected from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Jammu & Kashmir, Odisha and Meghalaya. In the 2014 edition films have been in 10 thematic areas including gender, environment, religion & culture, children, forest & wildlife, livelihoods, education, PSAs, science & technology and student films. Films and documentaries upto 55 minutes in duration will be screened in the festival.

A wonderful line-up of films and documentaries

The festival will screen widely acclaimed films and documentaries like Candles in the wind, Tigress blood, Life Force-Western Ghats, The Pad Piper, Womb on Rent, Babai, Rainbows are Real, Prism, In Search of Destiny and Delhi 16 Dec 2012 to name a few. Prominent filmmakers whose films have got selected for this year’s festival include S. Nalla Muthu, Ishani k Dutta, Md Faizan, Rita Banerji, Snehasis Das, Akanksha Sood, Sanyog Mohite and Rishu Nigam. 

Promoting young filmmakers

The festival has a separate category for student filmmakers. This year 16 student films have been chosen for screening in the festival. These films have been made by students from FTII, TISS, TERI, Jamia Millia Islamia and Delhi University.  According to Tanvi Rustagi, Creative Director, Woodpecker Film Festival, “The festival aims to promote and nurture a new breed of filmmakers. These young filmmakers have vibrant ideas to explore through the medium of films and they are happy to experiment and learn. Our festival provides a platform to these young and talented filmmakers to showcase their work.”

Woodpecker Awards:

These 58 films will now compete for the coveted Woodpecker Awards. The award carries a trophy, citation a well as an honorarium in cash to the filmmaker. The Woodpecker Awards will be presented in a gala Award Ceremony on December 13 in New Delhi. The award winning films will also be screened in various travelling film festivals and other foras in 2015.

About the Organiser:

The film festival is being organised by New Delhi based CMSR foundation, a not-for-profit Trust. The Foundation has been established to harness the power of information, education and communications to achieve desired social change. Based on strong research footing, the initiatives and campaigns of the foundation are aimed towards creating viable and accessible platforms to directly engage people, groups and communities across the country and beyond in positive social action.(www.cmsrfoundation.org).

For more information contact:

Narender Yadav

Festival Director