BENGALURU: As the world is gearing up for yet another edition of the UN Climate Summit in Dubai, 2023 is set to be the hottest year on record. Amidst engulfing forest fires, flash floods all across the world and a rise of environmental refugees, the All Living Things Environmental Film Festival (ALT EFF)
is back in the city with its fourth edition to create awareness about the issues surrounding climate change through cinema.
The Festival will be in the city for four days with a repository of 19 films, collaborating with two partners Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environment (ATREE) on December 7 and 8 and the Bangalore Creative Circus (BCC) on December 9 and 10. Manisha Vinod, co-founder of Bangalore Creative Circus says,“We partnered with them last year and they had screenings only across a few cities but this time they have a lot more screenings.”
Talking about the process of curation of the Festival, Vinod says, “We co-curate the list of films based on our interest areas. We would rather do things that are connected to issues that people can relate to and push them to do something more.” Vinod adds, “Some of the highlights of the Festival will be movies like Against the Tide which is about these Koli fishermen in Mumbai who are struggling because of the changing landscape of the seas due to climate change.”
Laura Christie, festival producer and co-founder of ALT-EFF, finds films ‘to be a uniquely powerful way to change people’s mindsets and open up people’s minds to new ideas that can cross cultural barriers, social barriers, even language barriers’. She further adds, “Films are deeply emotive, and it gives us the power to walk in someone else’s shoes when we couldn’t get that by just reading an article.”
Christie says that they take the venue into consideration while curating the programme, “Knowing that our program is very diverse, around 62 films from 50 countries, we curate for a city according to the existing audience of the venue and what kind of things the audience cares about along with the languages accessible for that audience as well as regional issues that are relevant to them.”
As for the response to the Festival, Christie says, “The response has been fantastic. Last year, we had 15 screenings around the country. This time we have 50 screenings. We’ve seen our numbers grow quite significantly year on year out, as well as the number of films and the quality of films that are getting submitted to the festival has increased exponentially.” Out of the 62 films, 54 films will also be available for virtual screening, from December 1-10.
Highlights
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & the Environment (Dec7-8)
1. Deep Rising (English)
2. Into The Ice (Danish, English)
3. Leopard’s Tribe (Hindi, Marathi)
4. Chao Carbo (Spanish, English)
Bangalore Creative Circus (Dec 9-10)
1. We Are Guardians (English, Portuguese)
2. Mol (Worth) (Marathi, Hindi)
3. All Day and All of the Night (Gujrati, Hindi)
4. Against The Tide (Hindi, Marathi)
(The tickets are available on PaytmInsider)