Following the scintillating opening ceremony on Day 1, the second day of the Vishwarang International Film Festival, which is a part of the week-long Tagore International Literature & Arts Festival ‘Vishwarang 2020’, received the same enthusiasm and warmth from the audience.

The key highlight of the second day of the Film Festival, which is being held online on vishwarang.com due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was a ‘Masterclass’ with three-time National Award winner, Indian doctor turned film director and screenwriter Dr Bijukumar Damodaran on the subject ‘Cinematic Language of a Director’. The screening of his film ‘Painting Life’ was another major session of the day.

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Day 2 of the unique film festival commenced with a film screening by director Uma Vasudev on Sahitya Akademi awardee and the first modern woman poet of the Dogri language, Padma Sachdev. This was followed by another film screening on eminent Urdu poet Shahryar, directed by Obaid Siddiqui.

The second day of Vishwarang International Film Festival also witnessed a ‘Science Film Screening’ session featuring ‘Nagaland is Changing’, which is an award-winning documentary film about conservation in Nagaland, directed by Gurmeet Sapal.

A talk session with renowned Kurdish director Kazim Oz on ‘Independent Cinema’ was also held. In his session, Kazim Oz said, “Making cinema for me is hard like the meaning of life and existence and it’s easy like saying I make cinema for telling my problems. For me, cinema is a way of struggle, a ground for criticism and philosophical journey. In this journey, maybe I am searching for myself as well.”

In the evening, screening of some of the winning entries of the Festival’s Short Film Competition was held along with the interview of the winning films’ directors. The audiences were mesmerized after watching a Hindi short film called ‘Zari Wala Aasman’ which depicts communal tension in a peaceful small town of India, directed by Aasif Moyal. This was followed by an Indian documentary ‘Antihero’, directed by Sidhu Das and another documentary ‘Rukhsana’ directed by Muhammad Zorjis.

The second day of this unique film festival ended with an enlightening and delightful interaction with noted actor Ashutosh Rana. He said, “When we understand something from an outer perspective, we laugh at it but when we get the inner perspective of that person we only smile at them.”