SHARAN

Festival Coordinator: Mala Kapadia

Dates: 26^th to 30^th January 2016.
Timings: 4:30 pm to 10 pm.

This is a FREE event

Film festival for lovers of Mother Earth & Sustainable Living

7islands international Film Festival-7iiFF- is entering into the 10th edition. 11 years ago we started a mission to spread importance of non-violence resistance, global disarmament & peace based on Gandhian principles. To spread this message we selected the medium of documentary films, feature films and short films. In continuation of International Year of Soil (2015) as declared by UN, this edition screens films on Non-Violence to Mother Earth & Organic Living.

SCHEDULE

Day 1 – 26^th January, 2016

1. From Darkness to Light in Africa

Time: 4.30-4.43 pm

Director-Bata Bhurji, India, 11 minutes.

This film about illiterate semiliterate African ordinary women who did extraordinary work. They came to India (Barefoot college Tilonia-Rajasthan), learned about solar energy, and went back to their countries with confidence and solar electrified their villages thus becoming the women heroes not only in their village but also in their countries.

2. The Living Seed

Time: 4.43-5.04 pm

Director-Neel Chaudhuri, India, 20 minutes. . Testimonies of farmers, seed savers,         agronomists and scientists from across India and abroad form the basis for their compelling investigation of GMOs, organic farming and the future of agriculture.
BREAK 5 MINUTES, INAUGURATION       5.10-5.40 pm

3. The Invisible (R)Evolution : Inaugural Film

Time: 5.45-7.10 pm

Director – Philippe Borrel, France, 85 minutes. It tells stories about citizens of the world who have joined forces: creating cooperative and supportive groups, giving birth to a series of projects able to find a real alternative to the traditional concept of growth at any cost and rhythm.
BREAK 10 MINUTES

4. Under the Same Sun

Time: 7.20-8.30 PM

Director- Sameh Zoabi, Israel/Palestine, 70 minutes. The film tells the highly dramatic story of Shaul and Nizar, Israeli and Palestinian businessmen who set out to make money and wind up making peace. Their intense relationship leads them to personal transformation – and, ultimately, plays a key part in societal change. But the road is not easy. They must deal with strong opposition to cooperation in both their societies.

5. Inhabit A Permaculture Perspective

Time: 8.30-10 pm

Director- Costa Boutsikaris, USA, 90 minutes. Inhabit is a feature length documentary Introducing permaculture: a design method that offers an ecological lens for solving issues related to agriculture, economics, governance, and on. The film presents a vast array of projects, concepts, and people, and it translates the diversity of permaculture into something that can be understood by an equally diverse audience. For those familiar, it will be a call to action and a glimpse into what’s possible – what kind of projects and solutions are already underway. For those unfamiliar, it will be an introduction to a new way of being and a new way of relating to the Earth. For everyone, it will be a reminder that humans are capable of being planetary healing forces.

Day 2 – 27^th January, 2016

1. The Living soil

Time: 4.30-4.50 pm

Director-Neel Chaudhuri, India, 18 minutes. The debates on GMO and organic farming, the future of farmers and agriculture, and the politics of food are not new. Navdanya has been fighting for the rights of the farmer and seed freedom for 25 years. Today, we find ourselves at a crucial point, not just in terms of a movement committed to resisting biological and ecological destruction, but also in the presence of a network of ‘living’ and thriving economies. The Living Farms series explores these questions, looking at five specific aspects of farming – Seed, Soil, Food, Fibres and Farmers.

2. The Graceful descent

Time: 4.50-5.50 pm

Director- Katie Young, USA, 58 minutes. American filmmaker and journalist, Katie Young, sets off on a journey to define the broadly used term: “sustainability.” After leaving her job to work on an organic farm, in order to learn about sustainable food production, she decides to take her journey one step further and travel to New Zealand. After some bumps in her journey, she eventually discovers Permaculture. This movement not only defines sustainability, but offers the planet a cleaner and greener future.

BREAK 10 MINUTES

3. The Age of Stupid

Time: 6-7.33 pm

Director- Franny Armstrong, UK, 92 minutes. The film is a drama-documentary-animation hybrid which stars Pete Postlethwaite as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, watching archive footage from the mid-to-late 2000s and asking “Why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?”
BREAK 10 MINUTES

4. We refuse to be enemies

Time: 7.45-9 pm

Director- Angelika Reicherter, Germany, 75 minutes. This was the guiding line on the pilgrimage led by Benjamin von Mendelssohn, descendant of Moses Mendelssohn famous philosopher at the times of Immanuel Kant. Around 40 people from different countries followed Benjamin von Mendelssohn on his way through the occupied territories of Palestine and Israel. They helped at the olive harvest, met people on both sides of the wall. On their pilgrimage they developed a vision for peaceful co-existence in the Middle East. This film acknowledges trauma on both sides, gives hope and encourages for peaceful co-existence.

5. Go Green

Time: 9-9.02 pm

Director- Students of Toon Club, India, and Animation film, 1 minute 6 sec
BREAK 10 MINUTES

6. Safe Space

Time: 9.15-9.30 pm

Director-Zora Rux, Germany, 13 minutes. Patrick and Sara lives a love story. But they are also fighting together for refugee rights in Berlin. When harmless advance turns into a sexual assault, the group is forced to rethink their aims and the private story grows to an unwanted public dimension.

7. I am Sami

Time: 9.30-9.45 pm

Director-Kae Bahar, Kurdistan/UK, 15 minutes. Living in a war zone, 10 year old Sami is forced to take decisions beyond his understanding; decisions that could deprive him of his childhood and change his life forever.

Day 3- 28^th January, 2016

1. Timbaktu

Time: 4.30-5 pm

Director- Rintu R. Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh, India, 30 minutes. When a small farming community in South India decided to switch from their decades-old practice of chemical agriculture to organic farming, little did they know that they were planting the seeds of a silent revolution? By showcasing the exemplary efforts of farmers of a tiny village in Andhra Pradesh, Timbaktu explores critical issues of food security and sovereignty. At its heart, Timbaktu looks at the relationship that a farmer shares with her land, her seeds and raises critical questions about food, the very essence of human life.

2. Satyagraha

Time: 5-6.25 pm

Director- Lisa Sabina Harney, USA/India, 85 minutes. Story of a lone Swami in Himalayan ranges to fight the land mafias who are affecting the course of Ganga. Environmental concerns are overlooked by administrators and mining mafias as they manage the Governmental permissions. This film alarms us to man-made disasters and how we all can make it our personal & spiritual responsibility to protect environment.

BREAK 10 MINUTES

3. Erasure Dude

Time: 6.35-6.40 pm

Director- Students of Toon Club, India, and Animation film, 2 minutes 47 sec

4. Recipes for disaster

Time: 6.40-7.55 pm

Director- John Webster, Finland, 85 minutes. Concerned about our civilisation’s addiction to oil and the catastrophic effects of climate change, a filmmaker persuaded his family to go on an „oil diet” for a year. With the goal of reducing their contribution to CO2 emissions, he discovered a great deal – just as did his children and wife, who went along more or less of necessity – and became a man with a mission. Recipes for Disaster is very witty and entertaining. But it is also often profound, because it does not leave out the human dimension – especially conflicts with his family’s patience, and including his own fanaticism, which is then tamed by his wife’s love.

BREAK 10 MINUTES

5. Mere Desh Ki Dharati

Time: 8.05-9.05 pm

Director- Sumit Khanna, India, 60 minutes. In our effort to achieve food security, have we compromised on food safety? The Film investigates the impact of pesticides as they enter the food chain.

6. Yield

Time: 9.05-9.25 pm

Director- Neel Chaudhuri, India, 19 minutes. Commissioned by the 2014 Food Safety and Sustainable Agriculture Forum, YIELD presents testimonies from the cotton farmers in Vidarbha, Maharashtra. The region has suffered a high number of suicides among the debt-ridden farming community in the wake of the introduction of chemical farming and BT Cotton. YIELD presents voices of dissent and resilience from within this community, victims of a corporate imperialism that threatens their means of living and future.

Day 4- 29^th January, 2016

1. Ambi jiji’s Retirement

Time: 4.30-5 pm

Director- Nandini Bedi, India, 30 minutes. Ambi Jiji always planted her crops on soil where forests have been burnt. This jhum field would then be abandoned and left to regenerate into a forest and a new one burnt. Increasingly, jhum fields are being turned into orchards which provide cash and food security. Through Ambi Jiji and her daughters, we see the passing of a way of life in a remote village in Meghalaya.

2. Eco-Dharma

Time: 5.02-5.32 pm

Director-Malgorzata, India, 30 minutes. The story of the dedication and sacrifice of the Bishnoi community, the oldest practicing environmentalists of India from Western Rajasthan, for whom the preservation of wild life and forests is a religion.

3. Sandorkraut

Time: 5.32-5.44 pm

Director- Ann Husaini & Emily Lonsenz, USA, 12 minutes. SANDORKRAUT is an intimate portrait of Sandor Katz, America’s foremost fermentation revivalist. A native New Yorker, Sandor abandoned a life in politics in the early ’90’s after a health crisis. He relocated to an off-the-grid queer community in rural Tennessee, where his love of gardening and an overabundant cabbage harvest led him to make his first batch of sauerkraut. An intense personal obsession with fermented foods was born.

BREAK 10 MINUTES

4. Algol

Time: 6-7.45 pm

Director- Hans Werckmeister, Germany, 100 minutes. This German silent film investigates modernity’s faith in progress as one of the fundamental causes of climate change. It narrates the story of a simple coal miner who learns the secret of a never-ending energy source from an inhabitant of the planet Algol. But instead of this technology being used for the benefit of all, it is misused for the exercise of power on the part of individuals. In the end, the few who profited from Algol’s technology cannot even achieve individual happiness, in spite of their unimagined wealth – the film’s true tragedy.

BREAK 15 MINUTES

5. Before the Flood: Tuvalu

Time: 8-9.02 pm

Director- Paul Lindse, UK/France, 62 minutes. The British-French co-production Before the Flood: Tuvalu tells about the Pacific island of Tuvalu that will sink below the sea in a few decades, due to climate change. Once the third-poorest country on earth, in the 1990’s Tuvalu sold its Internet domain „tv“, thus earning its approx. 10,000 inhabitants an enormous improvement in their standard of living. With the money, the American Way of Life and its accompanying resource wastage is now making inroads. In an ironic and yet melancholy tone, the film describes the efficacy of the modern western lifestyle, and shows at the same time how difficult it is to refrain from short-term consumption for the sake of long-term quality of life. Even when the negative effects are literally right in front of one’s doorstep.

6. Candles in the wind

Time: 9.05-9.55 pm

Directors- Kavita Bahl, Nandan Saxena, India, 52 minutes. Punjab – the food bowl of India – is in the news for policy induced non-remunerative agriculture and escalating farm-suicides. Women of rural Punjab have long forgotten to sing the songs of harvest.

‘Candles in the wind’ witnesses the march of widows of the ‘Green Revolution’ as they re-negotiate the rules of engagement and the politics of domination in their bid to survive. Their struggle gives us a window into the social-economic flux in rural India – a nuanced understanding of the silent under-currents of a gender-specific struggle in the larger narrative of surviving as a farmer in these times.

Day 5- 30^th January, 2016

1. The Tear of the Dragonfly

Time: 4- 4.20 pm

Director- Daniel Raquena Lambart, 18 minutes. A visual poetic depiction of people and Nature with their interconnectedness.

2. Life is Waiting

Time: 4.20-5.22 pm

Director- Iara Lee, 60 minutes. Western Sahara, USA, Spain.Forty years after its people were promised freedom by departing Spanish rulers, the Western Sahara remains Africa’s last colony. While a UN-brokered ceasefire put an end to armed hostilities in the territory in 1991, the Sahrawi people have continued to live under the Moroccan armed forces’ oppressive occupation, and what peace exists in the area is fragile at best. Tens of thousands of Sahrawis have fled to neighboring Algeria, where over 125,000 refugees still live in camps that were intended to be temporary. In spite of these difficulties, a new movement, with youth at its center, is rising to challenge human rights abuses and to demand the long-promised referendum on freedom. Today’s young generation is deploying creative nonviolent resistance for the cause of self-determination. In doing so, they’ve had to persevere against a torrent of conflicting forces. While risking torture and disappearance at the hands of Moroccan authorities, they’re also pushing back against those who have lost patience with the international community and are ready to launch another guerrilla war.

3. Masika, Promoting sustainable Mensuration

Time: 5.22-5.34 pm

Director- Doris Van Kalkar, India, 11 minutes. Mind boggling numbers of how much landfill is generated by disposable sanitary napkins. This film gives options of sustainable reusable napkins, in a modern way, aligned with traditional concept prevalent in India.

BREAK 10 MINUTES

4. Apna Aloo Bazar Becho

Tim: 5.44-6.15 pm

Director- Pankaj H. Gupta, India, 30 minutes. What happens when remote, isolated mountain communities come face to face with globalisation? Jardhar, a village in the Hemval Valley of Garhwal, led an isolated, egalitarian existence until a series of events forced it into joining the market economy. This Documentary, based entirely on local perspectives, reflects on the process of change – what triggers the shift to modernisation and what impact it has on personal, social and environmental spaces.

5. Earth Witness

Time: 6.15-7.15 pm

Director- Akanksha Joshi, India, 60 minutes. Four common people – a teacher, a farmer, a shepherd, a father – find themselves on the front line of the earth’s biggest, most complex crisis: climate change. Belonging to India’s ancient tribes, they bear witness to the science behind the changes that affect their day to day life. Living in diverse climatic regions – the mountains of Nagaland, the grasslands of Kutch, the Gangetic delta and the forests of Central India – they use this challenge as a part of their art with nature. Their lives journey through the dark labyrinths of the multidimensional crisis, reflecting stories of our times – of trees, mining, monkeys, logging, rivers, seeds, waterfalls, flowers – and the spirit of the timeless.
BREAK 15 MINUTES

CLOSING CEREMONY 7.30-8 pm

6. Menschen – Träume – Taten (i.e. People – Dreams – Actions) CLOSING FILM

Time: 8.05-9.35 pm

Director- Andreas Stiglmayr, Germany, 90 minutes. While searching for a future-compatible community model, film-maker Andi Stiglmayr came upon the model settlement „Sieben Linden” (i.e. Seven Linden Trees), founded in 1997 and located in the Altmark, about 150 km west of Berlin. 120 people have come together there, forming various neighbourhoods, and are seeking to integrate life’s different domains – such as work, leisure time, education and culture – with each other. But in areas such as communication, raising children, power, and particularly the relationship between men and women, it becomes clear that the problems of society at large are vividly reflected in this

7. Food for Thought

Time: 9.35-9.57 pm

Director- Susan Rockfeller, USA, 22 minutes. We want our food fast, convenient and cheap, but at what cost? As farms have become supersized, our environment suffers and so does the quality of our food. Susan Rockefeller’s short film, Food for Thought, Food for Life (20 min.) explains the downsides of current agribusiness practices, and also introduces us to farmers, chefs, researchers, educators, and advocates who are providing solutions. The film is both poetic and practical; its powerful examination of the connections between our planet and our well-being is accompanied by specific strategies that protect both. With an eye towards a sustainable and abundant future, it offers inspiration for communities that are ready to make a difference.

Website: http://www.7islands.in