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LIGHTSCHOOL SATURDAY DOCUMENTARY AT NAZRUL TIRTHA, NEW TOWN
DAY 1 | AUGUST 21, 2021
A Northern Soul | [02:30pm to 04:00pm]
Dir: Sean McAllister
73min | UK | 2018
Following 2015’s Doc/Fest Grand Jury Winner - A Syrian
Love Story, Sean McAllister returns to his hometown, Hull,
as curator of its’ UK City of Culture opening. Back living
with his 90-year-old parents and reflecting on changes to a
city hit by cuts in public spending and divided by Brexit,
Sean is drawn to the fringes of town where he encounters
Steve – a struggling warehouse worker with a dream.
DAY 1 | AUGUST 21, 2021
The Woman and The Glacier | [04:30pm to 05:30pm]
Dir: Audrius Stonys
57min | Lithuania, Estonia | 2016
The Lithuanian scientist Aušra Revutaite has spent 30
years in the Tian Shan mountain range in Central Asia,
straddling the borders between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang. Some
3,500 meters above sea level with only her faithful dog
and gray cat for company, she studies climate change on
the Tuyuksu Glacier at an old Soviet-era research station.
She loves the solitude and silence that her painstaking
work brings her.
DAY 2 | AUGUST 28, 2021
Swimming Through The Darkness | [02:30pm to 04:00pm]
Dir: Supriyo Sen
76min | India | 2018
Hailing from a poor family, blind man Kanai Chakraborty
chooses the daring life of a swimmer. But his success in the
sport couldn’t ensure him a job, and hence he has to keep
swimming to retain a respectable identity at the age of 40.
As he continues stumbling off the water while sailing
smoothly on it, the film chronicles the roller-coaster journey
of a gritty man who constantly negotiates with destitution,
desire and destiny while chasing his dream.
DAY 2 | AUGUST 28, 2021
Bridges Of Time | [04:30pm to 06:00pm]
Dir: Audrius Stonys & Kristine Briede
70min | Lithuania | 2018
Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys’s meditative
documentary essay portrays the less-remembered
generation of cinema poets of the Baltic New Wave. With
finesse, they push beyond the barriers of the common
historiographic investigation in order to achieve a
consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of
documentary creation.
DAY 3 | SEPTEMBER 04, 2021
I Am Breathing | [02:30pm to 04:00pm]
Dir: Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon
73min | UK | 2012
Breathing is about the thin space between life and
death. 34-year-old Neil Platt plans his own funeral,
muses about the meaning of life and the impossibility
of terminating a mobile phone contract. With 5 months
left to live, and paralyzed from the neck down by
Motor Neurone Disease, he ponders how to
communicate about his life in a letter for his baby son.
How can he anticipate what he might want to know
about his father in a future he can only imagine?
DAY 3 | SEPTEMBER 04, 2021
Janani's Juliet | [04:30pm to 05:30pm]
Dir: Pankaj Rishi Kumar
53min | India | 2019
Kausalya lost her husband (Shankar), when they were
attacked by her own family. They had married against their
families' wishes. Deeply disturbed by a spate of honor
killings in India, Indianostrum, a Pondicherry based theatre
group sets out to introspect the implications of caste,
class and gender. They adapt Shakespeare's ‘Romeo and
Juliet’. What emerges in the process is a critical reflection
and commentary of the contemporary Indian society
where love struggles to survive.
India's Official entry to the Oscar's (2019) Janani's Juliet
counterpoints a new interpretation of Shakespeare's
classic with a caste crime in the area.
DAY 4 | SEPTEMBER 11, 2021
A Syrian Love Story | [02:30pm to 04:00pm]
Dir: Sean McAllister
76min | UK & Syria | 2015
Filmed over five years, A Syrian Love Story charts an
incredible odyssey to political freedom in the West.
For the protagonists Raghda and Amer, it is a journey
of hope, dreams and despair: for the revolution, their
homeland and each other. Filming began in Syria in
2009, prior to the wave of revolutions and changes in
the Arab world. This film tells the poignant story of
their family torn apart by the tyrannical Assad
dictatorship.
DAY 4 | SEPTEMBER 11, 2021
Immortal | [04:30pm to 05:30pm]
Dir: Ksenia Okhapkina
60min | Estonia, Latvia, Russia | 2019
Set in a northwestern industrial town Apatity in
Russia, which was previously a concentration camp,
the documentary reveals the mechanism that entices
human beings to voluntarily become a resource to the
state. What happens to people’s free will and selfdetermination in such conditions? The film is a
Nietzschean treat, asking the core existential
question: is a human being ever born free?
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