Screening begins with short film by independent filmmaker/artist.

Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud Capped Star), 1960 Directed by Ritwik Ghatak

The Cloud-Capped Star tells the story of a family who have been uprooted by the Partition of India and come to depend on their eldest daughter, the self-sacrificing Neeta (Supriya Choudhury). She watches helplessly as her own hopes and desires are pushed aside time and again by those of her siblings and parents, until all her chances for happiness evaporate, leaving her crushed and ailing.

Featured Short Film

Planchette on 25 April, 2018 Directed by Dipa Mahbuba Yasmin

Director Statement :

“Planchette on 25 April”, the second film (cine-play) of Dipa and her team, is not a traditional film, rather it is a protest. It was just a documentation of an improvisational performance based on a letter for Mahbub Tonoy, who was killed on 25 April 2016 by the extremist to oppose the conventional expression of gender. He was a mustachioed man who loved to wear sharee and an activist for LGBT rights in Bangladesh. Dedicated to Tonoy on his first death anniversary, this improvisational cineplay was performed at Shadhona Cultural Circle.

It was an arranged planchette on the same date the following year to mark the victim’s first death anniversary, in which a letter was read to his departed soul. In this letter, we found a struggling marginal community, protests against the injustice, and the cries of community people demanding their security of normal death. A monologue of a fierce and real killing was depicted in this film technically in such an ordinary way that the audiences can see the movie without any stress. But the visuals of this 5 minutes length film, left a strong impression on the audience’s mind that might alert them to think about the deprived life of sexually marginal people.