Veteran filmmaker Tanvir Mokammel is flying out to Kolkata today to take part in the inauguration ceremony of the International Short and Documentary Film Festival of Eastern India as a special guest. Sandip Ray, son of the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray will also be present at the programme.
The festival will start at the Nandan cinema hall of Kolkata on June 23 and continue until June 27. Tanvir Mokammel’s hour length documentary “Karnaphulir Kanna” will be screend at the event. At the time of its release in 2005, the documentary was banned by the government of Bangladesh and after a High Court writ petition, the documentary was released from court.
“Karnaphulir Kanna” is about the Chittagong Hill Tracts, an area situated in the south-west of Bangladesh bordering Myanmar and India, comprised of three districts, and home to twelve predominantly Buddhist ethnic groups who are collectively known as the “Jumma” nation. The first disruption of the peace in Chittagong took place from 1959-1962, when a dam was constructed on the Karnaphuli river, submerging 54,000 acres of arable land and making refugees of 100,000 people in the process. It is referred to by locals as “The Great Exodus.” These hill people suffered a second crisis in 1979 when the government brought plain land Bangalees from various districts and settled them in the region in an artificial and intrusive manner, propelling incidents of gross human rights violations. Although a peace accord was signed in 1997 between the government and the Political Organization of the Hill People (PCJSS), the area remains one of the most unstable and impoverished in the nation. The film explores the agonies of the Chittagong inhabitants and is an example of what happens to a region and its people when they are kept out of the major national sphere.
Tanvir will also be attending a special film retrospective arranged in his honour by the Salt lake Film Society on July 5 and 6. Four of his films, “Lalon,” “Lalsalu,” “Rabeya” and “Jibondhuli” will be screened at the event.