Jai Bhim Comrade' bags Best Film Award

KATHMANDU, Oct 3: Rounding off the four-day documentary film festival in the capital, the eighth Film Southasia 2011, closed on a high note on Sunday with the screening of “Made in India”, “Pink Saris” and “Aadesh Baba”, followed by an award ceremony. Out of 36 outstanding non-fiction films, selected from nearly 400 entries received from all over Southasia, Anand Patwardhan’s “Jai Bhim Comrade” bagged the Ram Bahadur Trophy for Best Film.  Running three hours and 20 minutes, the film took 14 years to make and explores the history of Dalit activism in Maharashtra in the aftermath of the killing of 10 Dalit activists in Mumbai in 1997. Filmmaker Patwardhan, whose forte has been political documentaries , was present to receive the trophy, which was given away by the festival chief guest and eminent Bangladeshi filmmaker Catherine Masud. The jury praised the depth of Patwardhan’s personal involvement in the film. Winner of the Second Best Film award, “The Truth That Wasn’t There”, directed by Guy Guneratne, deals with the tale of three student journalists who cross into the north of Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the war in 2009. The Tareque Masud Debut Film Award went to “Journey to Yarsa” by Dipendra Bhandari. The film records the fight for economic survival by a family in Rukum District of Nepal that goes on to search for the yarsagumba - larvae-caterpillar. Full of praises for the film’s determination to bring a story of little known subject to the world, the jury appreciated the effort of the filmmaker in bringing forth a powerful tale of people’s endeavours and relationships in a remote community. A documentary from Burma, “Nargis: When Time Stopped Breathing” was recognised for Special Mention, “for its poetic yet strong visual craft celebrating the human spirit in the aftermath of the devastating cyclone in a closed society.” “Nargis: When Time Stopped Breathing”, that records the tragedy of the Cyclone Nargis which killed 140,000 people in the Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008, was recognized for a special mention. The documentary from Burma was made by two Burmese directors who prefer not to be known by their real names. The Jury of the FSA ’11 festival was composed of Satish Sharma, who is a photographer, curator and critic, Manesh Shrestha, who is an educator, journalist and former director of Film Southasia, and Igor Blazevic, who is the founder of the One World Film Festival with its base in Prague. Co-director of Film Southasia Upasana Shrestha shared that the 15 films selected from the 36 shown at FSA ’11 will tour the Subcontinent and the world as “Travelling Film Southasia” over the next two years.