The second edition of the Nila International Folklore Film Festival of India (NIFFFI) will take place on October 29, 30, 31 and November 5, 6, 7. The film festival, organised by the Vayali Folklore Group, will be held virtually.
NIFFFI is an annual festival that showcases films based on or emerging from indigenous cultures and folklore from around the world.
The festival will screen 12 films selected from 74 entries. There will be two sections for films with a duration below and above 30 minutes. The best two films will be selected for the Black Fire Awards. The awards will be decided by a jury comprising national award winning filmmaker Nina Sabnani, folklorist Catherine Hiebert Kerst and documentary filmmaker Amudhan Ramalingam Pushpam.
The selected films in the short format are Amepa directed by Kshipra Shekhar Dhavle, Mundari Srishtikatha (Meghnath), Myths of the Wancho (Tara Douglas), Sindhu: a subterranean song (Pallavi Arora and Shirley Bhatnagar), The traditional Brazilian family - Katu (Rodrigo Sena), Villupattu - The bow transcend the music (Jaya Jose Raj). Long format: Backstage (Lipika Singh Darai), Badshah Lear (Anant Raina), Journey into Khoomi (JF Castell), Nokkuvidya - The life of a lone string puppeteer (Reshmi Radhakrishnan), The enchanted words of the Hupdah of the Amazon (Mina Rad) and The sea of ecstacy (Nandakumar Thottathil).
The 'In Focus' section of NIFFFI '21, will be showcasing four films by Vinod Raja. His films centre around concerns like conservation values, tribal and nomadic communities and climate challenges. As a prelude to the festival, 11 films were screened in the Panorama section of NIFFFI from October 13 to 22.
Vayali Folklore Group is organising the film festival in association with Roots Video, ASTI, Sahapedia, IGNCA, and Centre for Intangible Heritage Studies, SSUS, Kalady.
“Vayali Folklore Group, a youth-led group started its journey on the banks of River Nila way back in 2004 with the clear objective of connecting youth to the local knowledge systems pegged on the banks of River Nila. As the team grew and expanded its operations to wider spaces of youth and folklore, the thought process to have a collective platform to bring new media into the context of Folklore, that resulted in formation of NIFFFI, said Vinod Nambiar, the director of Vayali Folklore Group.
NIFFFI had its maiden entry last year and all set to have the next edition in October 2021. Last year, we had a wider presence from different geographical areas, there were around 74 films that talked about diversified aspects of folklore spread across the world. In that, 18 films were from the North East, which were the highlights of the festival last year, Said Festival Coordinator Sidharth Aredath. The Naga film 'The Log Drum of Pessao' won the prestigious NIFFFI Black Fire Award.
For more details log on to www.nifffi.com.