Health Film Festival to showcase documentaries & Short Films about Health Issues and taboos
Pune, December 18, 2018 : Taking into account the need to speak about different health issues and taboos on the serious note and to create awareness about fitness, P. M. Shah Foundation has organized a two day film festival solely dedicated to Health. This festival will be held on Friday, December 21 and Saturday, December 22 at National Film Archives (NFAI) on Law College Road, where 38 short films and documentaries related to health will be shown. Entry to the festival is free and open to all.
The festival will be inaugurated at the hands of Subasini Mistry, a vegetable vendor from Kolkata who built the hospital for poor. Mistry is awarded Padma Shri by the government this year.
Adv. Chetan Gandhi, director of the foundation, informed that the festival will be showcasing 38 short films and documentaries carefully selected from 90 movies received from around the world. The films that are to be featured include films in Marathi, Hindi, English, Bengali, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Nepalese, Vietnamese and Spanish.
The festival will be inaugurated on Friday, December 21, at 2pm, at the hands of Padma Shri awardee Subasini Mistry. Mistry is the founder of Humanity Hospital in Hanspukur, Kolkata that treats poor patients for negligible fees. Subasini Mistry had lost her husband because they could not afford the medical treatment. After that, she took a mission to save money and built a hospital which will treat poor for free. She is awarded Padma Shri this year. Her journey will be unfolded at the inauguration ceremony through her interview. Dr. K. H. Sancheti, Senior Orthopedic Surgeon will also be present for the event as a chief guest.
The valedictory ceremony of the festival will be held on Saturday, December 22, at 4.30 pm. Famous Actor Devika Daftardar will be present for this event.
From the last two years, the Health Film Festival has started a competition section. This year, Film connoisseurs Dr.Chandrashekhar Joshi, Jayashri Deodhar and Medical practitioner Dr. Leena Borude served as juries for the festival. There is no entry fee charged for the films participating in the festival, informed Adv. Gandhi.
P. M. Shah Foundation has taken up many initiatives for the awareness regarding various health issues. ‘‘We thought that the same message can be propagated better using audio-visual medium. With an aim to reach to a larger population, we started this Health Film Festival in 2010 and the initiative is expanding every year. We had got 90 film entries, from which we have selected 38,’’ Said Gandhi.
In the last seven years, the festival has witnessed the presence of great personalities from different walks of life which includes Magsaysay Award Winner Dr.Rajanikant Arole, Wilson Bejwada, Former director of National Rural Health Mission Vikas Kharge, Renowned Eye Specialist Dr.Tatyarao Lahane, Activist Vidya Bal, Hamid Dabholkar, Actor Girish Kulkarni, Director Umesh Kulkarni & many others.
