|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Turkish Film Festival - My Marlon And Brando(2007/93mins) Dir.Huseyin Karabey Hama Ali, a charismatic actor from Iraq, who is famous locally for his performance as Iraq's version of Superman, meets the fiery actress from Turkey,Ayca, on a film set. He and Ayca had a passionate love affair before returning to their respective homes. From his Kurdish village, Hama Ali sends Ayca video love letters which he has filmed in his handycam.She watches them at her home in Istanbul, with her cat for company.the video love letters include the clippings of hellish violence engulfing Iraq.Feeling suffocated by her own city and angered by the indifference towards the war that surrounds her.Ayca decides to make the journey eastwards to Iraq to be reunited with her lover. Awards - Winner Jerusalem Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize,2008. Collab: Turkish Embassy

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Turkish Film Festival -My Only Sunshine (2008/113mins) Dir.Reha Erdem .Set in Istanbul, the film tells the tragic story of 14 year old Hayat, who lives with her father and bedridden grandfather in a riverside shack.Her father makes a living by ferrying people in a small boat that guarantees the family's survival.Hayat endures her sufferings with courage because she has an instinct for survival against the injustices of the world. With its own subjective rhythm, the film seeks to channel the spirit of the dangerously dark, but breathtakingly beautiful waters of the Bosphorus, which director Reha Erdem uses as a metaphor of his big-hearted heroine.Awards - Special Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival,2009. Collab: Turkish Embassy

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Turkish Film Festival  -  Dot ( 2008/85mins)Dir. Dervis Zaim. Story of a man tormented by a crime he once committed, who now seeks to redeem himself. The action, which advances along an axis of crime and punishment, organically incorporates one of Turkey’s traditional art forms, calligraphy, into the story. One of the most striking ways in which calligraphy marks both language and content is the film’s structure as a single, fluid shot. Awards - Best Film Istanbul International Film Festival.Collab: Turkish Embassy

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Turkish Film Festival – Autumn(2008/99mins) Dir.Ozcan Alpher.Released after 10 years of imprisonment for anti-government activities as a student in the 1990s, Yusuf returns to his sick mother in a mountainous village near the Black Sea. Outside his home in the village, he interacts only with his childhood friend, Mikail. As autumn slowly gives way to winter, Yusuf and Mikail go to a tavern where Yusuf meets Eka, a beautiful Georgian prostitute . Love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and get over solitude. For a man who has nothing to look forward to, there lurks the bitter deception of a shattered socialist dream.Awards - Special Jury Prize,Locarno Film Festival,2008. Collab: Turkish Embassy

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Turkish Film Festival -  Distant (2002/110mins) Dir.Nuri Belge Ceylan.Mahmut, a 34 year old independent photographer, is a villager who has made it good professionally in the big city , Istanbul. After his wife leaves him, he falls into an existential crisis. Soon, his cousin Yusuf, who has to leave his native village after  a local factory closed down, joins him in Istanbul. But there is a divide between them.While Mahmut has already adjusted himself to the big city life,Yusuf is yet to get rid of the village lifestyle and he feels lonely in Istanbul, where he becomes nervous and squeamish because of his hygienic habits. Moreover, he is desperate to make a living as he has a sick mother back home and has to support her somehow. How Yusuf bears out of the troubled times and how Mahmut helps his cousin keep his conscience is what the film is about.Awards - Cannes Film Festival,2003. Collab: Turkish Embassy

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Turkish Film Festival –Milk(2008/102 mins)  Dir.Semih Kaplqanoglu.A high school graduate,Yusuf's passion in life is to write poems. When he is not on his poetic pursuits, he sells milk in the company of his childhood sweetheart,Zehra. Neither his poems printed in some of the obscure literary journals, nor the rapidly falling price of  milk improve his condition in life. If this is not enough, he finds out that Zehra is carrying on a secret affair with the town's station master. Both his sweetheart's betrayal and the uncertain future that stares at him as he steps into adulthood makes him discontented. Awards -   FIFPRESCI Award  Istanbul Film Festival. Collab: Turkish Embassy

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Irish Film Festival of India - The Writing Irish- A celebration of the great Irish writers throughout history with screen adaptations of works by James Joyce, William Trevor, Brian Friel, and Samuel Beckett. Blood Coloured Moon (2009/11mins) Dir.Marc-Ivan O’Gorman. In rural Ireland, Good Friday night, 1967 a stranger arrives at an isolated pub and tries to persuade the woman of the house to run away with him by reciting a poem.  Her husband isn't too impressed! The Dead (1987/83mins) Dir.John Huston. An adaptation of perhaps one of the greatest pieces of English-language literature by one of Huston's favorite authors, James Joyce; a love letter to the land of his ancestors and the country where his children grew up; and the chance to work with his screenwriter son Tony and his actress daughter Anjelica. The film is delicate and unhurried, detailing a dinner at the house of two spinster musician sisters and their niece in turn-of-the-century Ireland, attended by friends and family. Among the visiting attendees are the sisters' nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. The evening's reminiscences bring up melancholy memories for Gretta concerning her first, long-lost love when she was a girl in rural Galway. Her recounting of this tragic love to Gabriel brings him to an epiphany. Collab: The Embassy of Ireland & Culture Ireland

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Irish Film Festival of India- The Writing Irish continues. Circle Of Friends (1995/103mins) Dir.Pat O’Connor. Set in 1950′s Ireland, this charming romantic comedy follows Benny Hogan and her best friend, Eve Malone as they enter student life at University College, Dublin. Here Benny and Eve reunite with their childhood friend, the ice-cool Nan Mahon, the ‘college belle’. They also encounter the handsome and charming Jack Foley, for whom Benny quickly falls. Collab: The Embassy of Ireland & Culture Ireland

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Irish Film Festival of India- The Writing Irish continues. Dancing At Lughnasa (1998/95mins) Dir.Pat O’Connor. Adapted from the play by Brian Friel, the film is based on the lives of Friel’s mother and aunts who lived in the Glenties, on the west coast of Donegal. Set in the summer of 1936, the film depicts the late summer days when love briefly seems possible for three of the Mundy sisters and the family welcomes home the frail elder brother, who has returned from a life as missionary in Africa. The film takes place in early August, around the festival of Lughnasa, in Celtic folklore, the festival of the first fruits, when the harvest is welcomed. Collab: The Embassy of Ireland & Culture Ireland

|DOC FILM|The Divine Search, The Baul Singers Of Bengal by Benoy K. Behl. Prod. Doordarshan

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Irish Film Festival of India- The Writing Irish continues. Ballroom Of Romance (1982/52mins) Dir.Pat O’Connor. Based on a short story by William Trevor, the film follows the trails of Bridie, an unmarried woman in her mid-thirties, who lives in rural Ireland and spends much of her time caring for her crippled father. Bridie still hopes to marry, and on Saturday nights, she rides her bicycle the seven miles to a wayside dance hall. She has been going to the dances for years but tonight she sees it in a completely new light. Krapp’s Last Tape (2000/50mins) Dir.Atom Egoyan. In Krapp’s Last Tape, which was written by Nobel-prize winning, avant-garde writer, Samuel Beckett, in 1958, an old man reviews his life and assesses his predicament. We learn about him not from the 69-year-old man on stage, but from his 39-year-old self on the tape he chooses to listen to. On the ‘awful occasion’ of his birthday, Krapp was then and is now in the habit of reviewing the past year and ‘separating the grain from the husks’. He isolates memories of value, fertility and nourishment to set against creeping death ‘when all my dust has settled’. Collab: The Embassy of Ireland & Culture Ireland

|FILM CLUB SCREENING|Irish Film Festival of India- The Writing Irish continues. The Butcher Boy (1997/110mins) Dir.Neil Jordan. Based on the Booker-shortlisted novel of the same name, The Butcher Boy is a tragicomic drama about Francis Brady, a 12-year-old boy, who becomes a problem child due to his dysfunctional family, and displays uncontrollable brutality when he grows up. Presented in a First-person narrative and stream of consciousness style, this unique film won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival in 1998 and ‘Variety’ called it Oscar-winner, Neil Jordan’s ”most accomplished and brilliant film to date”.Collab: The Embassy of Ireland & Culture Ireland

|FILM|DanzLenz Screening of eight Dance films shorts by Maida Withers, internationally celebrated Dance artist and film maker, who will be present for an interaction post screening. Music composer Steve Hilmy & graphic artist and editor Anthony Gongora will also be present. Collab: Kri Foundation

|DOC FILM|Short Film Festival. A showcasing of critically acclaimed short films from across the world Collab: Shamiana

|DOC FILM|Cine Basanti - A presentation of films and poetry reading on Basant, the spring festival. The two-day presentation features  films, music and poetry readings on Basant sourced from our unique syncretic cultural traditions. Screening of Basant(1997/Hindustani/English, 13 mins)Dir. Yousuf Saeed .The film documents a day in the life of Sufis and Qawwals at the tomb of Nizamuddin, celebrating Basant.Mela Basant Bahar(25 mins)Dir.Samina Aslam.A colourful film about the Basant celebration at Lahore, focusing on the kite-flying events in Lahore and other Pakistani towns. The film also traces the history of kite flying.Introduced by film maker Yousuf Saeed.

| DOC FILM|Cine Basanti concludes. Portraits of Belonging: Bhai Mian (1998/Hindustani/34 mins)Dir.Samira Jain.Portrait of a traditional kite-maker, Bhai Mian, from the old city of Delhi, a man whose ordinariness barely conceals his imagination and resilience. Followed by reading of Urdu poetry on ‘Basant’ by Sadia Wahidi. Introduced by Yousuf Saeed.