The 3rd Samsung Women’s International Film Festival was held at Chennai between 1st and 9th March 2010.
The festival was organized by Samsung India Electronics Pvt Ltd and InKo Centre, in partnership with a number of other organizations, including Magic Lantern Foundation.
The 9-day festival showed 175 films from 53 countries. The films included feature films, documentaries and shorts by filmmakers ranging from great stalwarts from India and the world, to those by very young filmmakers, including student films. Magic Lantern Foundation contributed to the festival with 19 films from Under Construction, its distribution initiative. These films were:
1. 7 Islands and a Metro by Madhusree Dutta
2. A, B, She by Subas Das
3. A Healer is Born by Gargi Sen
4. Born at Home by Sameera Jain
5. Colours Black by Mamta Murthy
6. Colours of the Earth by Kavita Dasgupta
7. Every Good Marriage Begins with Tears by Simon Chambers
8. Identity: The Construction of Selfhood by Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayasankar
9. I’m the Very Beautiful by Shyamal Karmakar
10. Is School the Thing Makes a King? by Vani Subramanian and Surajit Sarkar
11. Journeys by Reena Mohan
12. Kamlabai by Reena Mohan
13. Looking for Amitabh by Meenakshi Shedde
14. Moksha by Pankaj Butalia
15. Narrow is the Gate by Katarina Uibo
16. Notes on Man Capture by Nandini Bedi
17. Tantra: The Beauty of the Barren Land by Susant Mani
18. View from a Grain of Sand by Meena Nanji
19. Waiting… by Shabnam Ara and Atul Gupta
Another film, The Lightning Testimonies by Amar Kanwar was also shown at the festival, the Hindi version of which (Roshan Bayan) is distributed by Under Construction.
The program also included a day-long seminar Of Form and Frame : A Woman’s Point of View on 6 March, and a roundtable on Real women, Reel lives on 8 March to discuss the challenges of documenting women’s lives and their activities in the public sphere. Gargi Sen from Magic Lantern Foundation attended the festival and the seminars.