Raindance joins hands with Sindh Festival

Sindh International Film Festival will screen some of the best films from the 21st Raindance Film Festival.

The Raindance Film Festival (RFF) has collaborated with the first Sindh International Film Festival (SIFF) in Karachi, in an effort to screen some of the best films from the 21st RFF (September 25 t0 October 6, 2013) to a new audience in Pakistan.

RFF, which has now been running for more than 21 years, is one of the largest festivals of independent film-making in Europe. At last year’s annual event, it screened 127 features and 165 shorts by film-makers from 53 countries around the world. These films were selected from a total of 4,300 submissions from 71 countries.

The agreement has been put together by The Independent Film Trust (IFT), a United Kingdom-registered charity that works with Raindance on a number of projects.

The organisation was created to advance the cause of independent film-making, which supports initiatives that encourage interest in film production and help emerging film-makers to develop and express themselves. It works closely with groups such as Raindance to promote innovation and to celebrate the vitality and diversity of the sector.

The IFT each year offers a Raindance Training Scholarship (RTS), which is awarded each year to the production team behind the film that wins the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards.

Similarly, the IFT supports a special RFF award whose winner gets the right to make the trailer for the following year’s festival, as well as a cash contribution towards the cost of production. IFT chairman Neil McCartney will be one of the judges at the SIFF.

Sited at Nueplex Cinemas, Karachi, the screening will comprise five documentary and three fiction features. These will be included in the running for the Best Documentary and Best Feature categories at the festival, each of which will contain about 20 selected candidates.

The SIFF will take place from February 10 till 11 as part of the ongoing Sindh Festival, which has been set up to celebrate Pakistan’s heritage and culture.

It is fitting to see such collaborative ventures, which encourage inter-cultural communication and harmony.

The Raindance documentary selection (in association with the IFT):

Body of God, Jouni Hokkanen (Finland/USA)

Everybody Street, Cheryl Dunn (USA/Serbia and Montenegro)

Fall and Winter, Matt Anderson (USA)

Finding Family, Chris Leslie and Oggi Tomic (UK/Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Katiyabaaz (Powerless), Deepti Kakkar and Fahad Mustafa (India/USA)

The Raindance Fiction selection (in association with the IFT):

Jail Caesar, Paul Schoolman (UK/South Africa/Canada)

Season of Mists, Anna Tchernakova (UK/Russia)

The Empty Home, Nurbek Egen (Russia/Kyrgyrstan/France/UK)

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2014.

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