The stage is set for the second edition of the Odisha Art and literature Festival (OAlF) here commencing on Saturday.
The two-day event, being hosted by the Dhauli Review Trust, will be collectively inaugurated by three well-known Odia personalities from the fields of art and literature – writer Jayanta Mahapatra, artist Jatin Das and sculptor Raghunath Mohapatra.
Festival director Manu Dash explained that the festival seeks to have a holistic and inclusive approach towards literature. “Art and literature need not be confined as creative activities alone. These should benefit the society at large. Through this festival, we wish to emphasize on how art is not just for art’s sake but for the sake of the society. Thus, the writers and artists participating in the festival will also dwell upon discussion on poverty and disability alongside cinema and music.”
The inaugural session will commence with classical music recital by Soma Chattopadhyay followed by keynote address on “the missing realities in Indian novels” to be delivered by Satyanarayan Mohanty who is the Secretary General of National Human Rights Commission.
It would further have a release of four books, both in Odia and English - Ashwini Kumar's 'Benaras and Others’, Sukanya Mohanty's 'Cacophony and Silences’, Harekrishna Deka's 'A Touch of Time' and Sarojkant Mishra's ‘Bou' , it was learnt.
The inaugural day would showcase four major discussion sessions - “Evaluation of contemporary art in India”; “Mainstream versus parallel cinema”, “Is our children’s literature an untouchable genre” and “Poverty: Where did we go wrong and the way ahead” apart from the poetry recitation session featuring 20 Odia poets.
Similarly, the second day of the festival will feature discussion sessions such as science, religion and literature, concern of writers and artists for the physically and mentally challenged, the art of writing poetry and the future of contemporary Odia music and lyrics, in addition to a poetry recitation session by writers in other Indian languages and English.
The writers attending the festival from outside Odisha include Ashwani Kumar, Hemant Divate, Tushar Dhawal, (all from Mumbai), Sarabjeet Garcha (Delhi), Sonnet Mondal, Subhasis Bhattacharya and Nandita Samanta (West Bengal), Huzaifa Pandit(Kashmir), B Maria Kumar (Bhopal), Bibudhendra Patnaik (Bengaluru) and Sushree Sangita Mishra (Chennai), the hosts informed. About 70 writers from the different parts of Odisha are scheduled to join the festival, they added.