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By Huned Contractor 'Bring Your Own Film Festival', scheduled to kick off on February 21, at Puri, in Orissa, has no room for hierarchy, bureaucracy or awards. It's all about film appreciation with no boring add-ons
 The sand, sea, surf, movies, music, magic and masti make for a unique combination. Which other film festival, after all, can boast of being completely unbiased and free? At Bring Your Own Film Festival (BYOFF), that will run for five days from February 21 on the beach in Puri, Orissa, there is no hierarchy, competition, jury or awards. There is no jostling and hustling for passes (unlike at the International Film Festival of India held at Goa) and no ‘networking’ to ensure that a particular film gets screened. There are no boring press conferences either, where filmmakers explain at length why their films are, well, different. At BYOFF, you can catch up with any film you like, either in a makeshift tent or on wide screens that are put up after the sun takes its daily dip into the sea. You can grab a plastic chair, or you can spread out on a dhurrie. You can even dig yourself into the soft sand with just your head popping out. Who cares, as long as the passion that unites everyone is films, films and more films. And, interestingly, it doesn’t stop there. There’s a bit of impromptu theatre, sculpture, music, dance and literature as well.
“The festival can best be described as an informal and intimate gathering of artists, with films in the backdrop, where screenings go on into the early hours of the morning. Ever since its first edition in 2004, it has emerged as an alternative platform because it gets away from the oppressive bureaucratic control of big cities. Here, anybody and everybody with a film to show can participate,” says Sushant Mishra, a BYOFF volunteer. BYOFF has become a forum for independent filmmakers who want to show their work, exchange thoughts and share experiences without being too concerned about awards and recognition. “The development of digital technology has made filmmaking accessible, but there are not enough avenues where such films can be shown. BYOFF has taken birth out of this need to create an open space,” Mishra adds. Films shown at BYOFF have been highlighted in the media for their unique content and style. One such film was Sekhar Das’ Mahulbanir Sereng (Songs of Mahulbani), which is an attempt to understand the borderline between the village and the city, the urban and the tribal. The film is narrated against the backdrop of the tribal movement in Jharkhand in the 1980s. It also documents the changing mood of a community in transition and the contradictions that exist in different layers of that society. Then there are films like Surabhi Sharma’s Aamakaar (The Turtle People) that explores how the destinies of the Olive Ridley turtle and the people of Kolavipalayam are intricately bound together; Anjali Monteiro and K P Jayasankar’s Naata that presents the activism of Bhau Korde and Waqar Khan in the wake of the Mumbai riots; Sherna Dastur’s Manjuben Truck Driver, which intimately documents the life of a woman truck driver who defies gender stereotypes and describes herself as half-Shiva and half-Shakti; and a voyeuristic film called Loo Tales by Jerrit John that shows what happens in the toilet of a Mumbai disco. Incidentally, the two venues where the films are being screened are Bhadaas and Dho, which, in Puri slang, mean the sound of a collision and an explosion respectively. “It became a way of greeting each other, an expression of happiness, anger, contempt, and when things don’t go well, resignation,” Mishra says. Very apt, one must add. For further details, log on to www.byofilmfestival.com. InfoChange News & Features, February 2007
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