Cinema is not an art which films life: cinema is something between art and life. Cinema both gives to life and takes from it — renowned French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard said.

Think film festivals. Think uncut, uncensored cinema. This has been the bane of film festivals. For associating them with unbridled romp and risque stuff sadly defeats, and demeans, their very purpose. The blinkered mindset is so firmly fixated that the tag associated with film festivals has not been able to be wished away.

Likewise, one other taboo constantly lobbed at is that they are too arty and high brow and quite removed from immediate grasp of lesser mortals.  However, there can be nothing more farfetched than this indelible impression that has been inevitably ingrained among the large diaspora. It has been a Sisyphean task for those associated with organising film festivals to demystify and deconstruct needless false notions.

The truism though is that, film festivals, like the recently concluded Bengalooru International Film Festival, have much, much more to offer, both as serious subject of study as also medium of art and entertainment, than that meets ordinary eye. Apart from bringing in and showcasing some choicest cinemas of world, both current as also classics, film festivals, are a singular window to appreciate and assimilate films from divergent spectrum of societies.

Even as they feed curious cinephiles and die-hard cineastes with celebrated films from across the globe, they also act as perfect platform for not only ordinary lovers of cinema, but avowed acolytes of film schools, practitioners and proponents, to get first hand feel of what constitutes cinema and how cinema can be approached as an art form. Be it to mirror social and cultural concerns, or to experiment with as technical tool, or art form providing for aesthetic appreciation and approach.

As renowned late Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman eloquently eulogised, “No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into dark rooms of our souls”. Indeed, films at festivals, carry larger message of how the medium can work effectively to create not only engaging cinema but also show there is more to movie-making than commercial claptrap.

Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves says, “the whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity”. It is this very aspect that film festivals strive to achieve bringing creme la creme cinema from across the global movie marquee providing soci-cultural window to various streams and strands, syntax, idioms and genres.