Women empowerment, and violence against women, would be of the issues of short films that form the closet of SHORTS 2014, the annual short film festival of the steel city. Shorts 2014 will be held on November 29 and 30 at the Centre for Excellence (CFE).
‘Shorts’ is a collaboration of Jamshedpur based SPPE (Society for Promotion of Professional Excellence) and Kolkata-based Take 5 Communication. The festival which began in 2008 is now in its seventh year. Shorts 2014 has a unique blend of films by professionals, budding and student film makers.
Twenty films would be screened this year, the duration of each film ranges from 3 to 30 minutes; languages being Hindi, English, Bengali and some are silent films. Films are from Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Jamshedpur.
Apart from films by regular film makers what has been encouraging for the festival right from its inception is the participation of Educational Institutions with their student films. This year one of the leading schools of Kolkata, la Martiniere for Boys has participated with its award winning student film SIlENT FOOTSTEPS which talks about environment protection.
Karim City College of Mass Communication, Jharkhand is also participating with the film SORRY, a film voicing against suicides.NO ENTRY (by Tathagata Bhattacherjee), PADMA PATAR JAl (by Dahnanjoy Mandal), SHAKTI RUPENA SAMSTHITA (by Abhishek Ganguli), KANGSHABATI’R DIDI (by Debajyoti Batabyal) and GAlPO (by Kiron Mukherjee) are some of the films made by professionals.
A special mention here is the Naseeruddin Shah starrer INT. CAFE-NIGHT by Adhiraj Bose, a budding film maker from Mumbai. This film which is on relationship has been screened and awarded at various National and International festivals.