4-day festival of creative docus kicks off in Kolkata
Times of India | 5 March 2025
1234 Kolkata: A festival of creative documentary featuring Shaunak Sen's ‘All That Breathes', Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh's ‘Writing with Fire', Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan's ‘Nocturnes', Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbo's ‘Agent of Happiness', Nistha Jain's ‘Golden Thread', Sarvnik Kaur's ‘Against The Tide', Sreemoyee Singh's ‘And, Towards Happy Alley' and Rajan Kathet and Sunir Pandey's ‘No Winter Holiday' is now being held at Nandan III. All these award-winning documentary films have been directed by the alumni of DocedgeKolkata, Asian Forum for Documentary.
"For almost two decades, DocedgeKolkata has been incubating projects which have won recognition on global platforms such Sundance, Berlinale, Peabody, Gotham, IDFA, Grierson Awards and also Oscar nominations. This year, we decided to introduce the Kolkata audience to the acclaimed films of our alumni," said Nilotpal Majumdar of Documentary Resources Initiative.
Contrary to perceptions, this pitching forum is not just for budding filmmakers. "In the Indian context, Docedge Kolkata is a rare and necessary space — where a documentarian's ambition meets the rigour of authorship. As both an incubator and pitch forum, it challenges filmmakers to interrogate their vision, forge vital connections, and does it with a sense of both depth and levity, making it a joyous community to be a part of," said Ghosh, co-director of the Oscar-nominated ‘Writing with Fire'.
This festival is seeing the Kolkata screening debuts of ‘Nocturnes', ‘Writing with Fire' and ‘Agent of Happiness'. Dutta and Srinivasan pitched ‘Flickering Lights' in 2017 and ‘Nocturnes' in 2020. "It was a wonderful experience sharing the projects at a fairly early stage with the mentors and peers. Presenting the film, developing the clearest and most impactful way to communicate our idea and listening to feedback greatly helped us," Srinivasan said. "It's an honour and privilege to finally share my finished film with mentors, peers and future filmmakers," said Bhattarai, who had pitched the project in 2020 about a documentary that follows two bureaucrats in Bhutan hired to survey people's happiness index on a mathematical scale. In a profound and humorous way, it details the lives and happiness quotient of the interviewees as well as one of the agents too.
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