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With a pledge to motivate the young activists, students & filmmakers to have a better understanding of the cross-cutting issues across South Asia – a 3 day long festival with 12 outstanding documentaries titled Travelling Film South Asia (TFSA) 2010 was held in Dhaka last February (11th -13th). These films were selected from 35 documentaries screened in the competitive section of Film South Asia ’09, the seventh edition of the festival of Southasian documentaries held in Kathmandu from 17-20 October 2009.
Documentaries screened in the session are ‘The Last Rites’ by Yasmine Kabir, ‘The Promised Land’ by Tanvir Mokammel, ‘Afghan Girls Can Kick’ by Bahareh Hosseini & ‘The Battle for Pakistan’ by Maheen Zia, ‘Come to My Country: Journeys with Kabir and Friends’ by Shabnam Virmani, ‘Children of God’ by Yi Seung-jun, ‘In Search of the Riyal’ by Kesang Tseten, ‘Mayomi by Carol Salter, ‘Out of Thin Air’ by Samreen Farooqui & Shabani Hassanwalia, ‘Saamam’ by Ramachandran K, ‘The Salt Stories’ by Lalit Vachani and ‘The Way of the Road’ by Ben Campbell & Cosmo Campbell.
With more than a thousand visitors the festival experienced long que of enthusiast audience almost before every show. Opening session was participated by the local cine-buffs and activists among whom were Human Rights activist Shaheen Anam, Filmmaker Tareque Masud, Morshedul Islam, Mazar-e-Hasin Murad, Yasmine Kabir, Actor, Jayanto Chattopadhyay, Bangladesh Film Archive Director Dr. Mohammad Jahangir Hossain, Teacher-Columnist-Talk-Show Host D. Muhammad Jahangir are a few to name.
The event also attracted good support from the local media with more than 10 coverage in the leading print media. Electronic media also gave a good boost with two channels providing good coverage in their existing programme structure and one channel airing a special exclusive talk-show participated by eminent cultural activist Sara Zaker & filmmaker Tanvir Mokammel and anchored by the festival director Kamar Ahmad Simon.
The festival was made possible by BEGINNING with support from Film South Asia (FSA) and generous collaboration of Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) & South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR). To gurantee the uninterrupted film experience all of the screening sessions were run by power generator and a dedicated team of 32 worked round-the-clock to make the festival a successful one.
