All set for Moving Waters Film Festival in city

The earth might be over two-thirds water, but do we really know anything beyond the edge of land?

Landing in Bengaluru on September 22, the Moving Waters Film Festival (MWFF) is about to expose territory water, overfished and overwhelmed with pollutants, poorly understood, but highly threatened by man’s greed.

The festival, says its organisers, will explore all that makes ours a blue planet — the rivers, lakes and oceans and the life they support. The key purpose will be to engage with conservationists, researchers, activists, artists and citizens on issues that affect the aquatic environment.

On the MWFF’s agenda is a selection of visually-appealing, hard-hitting films and expert talks to help the audiences navigate the tricky waters.

The two-day festival is hosted by Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan at Indiranagar.

Films

Lined up for screening is Suresh Elamon’s ‘Kananam: The Spirit of Silent Valley’, the story of a people’s movement to protect the Kunthi River and the valley it flows through.

In ‘Racing Extinction’, Oscar-winner Louie Psihoyos assembles a team of artists and activists intent on showing the world never-before-seen images that expose issues of endangered species and mass extinction.

Another film, ‘Blue Heart’ by Britton Caillouette and Patagonia, documents the fight to save the last wild rivers in the Balkans.

‘Ocean’s Monopoly’ examines ‘how nations use science to conquer the sea’ and what it would mean to reclaim land indefinitely beyond coastlines.

‘Tale of a Lake’ is about the icy waters of Finland’s Lake Saimaa.

Speakers

Among the speakers are dolphin biologist Dr Coralie D’Lima, talking about how Irrawaddy dolphins and fishers mutually help each other in Odisha’s Chilika Lagoon; Silpa V Kumar, sharing her experiences as a former wildlife warden in the Silent Valley National Park; and Tiasa Adhya, co-founder of The Fishing Cat Project, reveals the contradictions in policies that drive habitat loss for fishing cats.

Workshop

Rithesh Nanda, one part of the father-son nature photography duo, will introduce underwater photography and its nuances, while Nisha Abdulla, a performance storyteller and playwright from Ever After Learning, has in store an ocean-themed storytelling workshop for children.