In the myriad galleries and screening rooms at the NCPA, people navigated their way to and from films, symposiums and exhibitions that constituted a preview to Osian’s Cinefan festival which will be held in Delhi come July. On display were antiquarian engravings of scenes from Shakespearean texts courtesy Boydell’s gallery, alongside kitschy and vibrant covers of mainstream vintage Hindi novels. But the festival isn’t escapist. It pivots around immediate concerns like dissent and censorship and the perennial crackdown on anything controversial.

Movies range from contemplative works by internationally revered film makers like Hou Hsiao-Hsien to experimental shorts made by upcoming Indian directors. The former’s languid Flight of the Red Balloon about a boy learning to cope with his mother’s vulnerability and the bond he forms with the Taiwanese film student hired to help take care of him, promises to draw a big crowd, with its unhurried pace, ad-libbed dialogues, references to Albert Lamorisse’s classic Le Ballon Rouge and an ethereal performance by Juliette Binoche.

The distinctive line-up of short films with a probable bout of questions and answers post-screening is very promising. Shorts like The Fiction work because of a good storyline, Rukshana Tabassum’s Topsy Turvy is remarkable for its avant-garde technique while others like The Love Song of… need to be better realised. The one to really look out for is Atul Sabharwal’s Midnight Lost and Found a jury award winner at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IIFLA) which combines the best of comic book analogies and effortless acting in the form of Deepak Dobriyal.

Classics like Kashmir ki Kali found space along with the preview of contemporary spy thriller Mukhbir and ‘autobiographical essays’ like Mohammed Bakri’s Since You Left. Shattering the myth that films are merely about entertainment, the Osian’s Cinefan festival aims to send every viewer home with a few questions rather than the usual suspension of disbelief.

Watch out for a keynote address by film-maker Kumar Shahani, a debate on Has Great Literature Spawned Great Cinema? with writers Kunal Basu, Chitra Divakaruni, Jaishree Misra and Sooni Taraporewala amongst others on July 13.
(Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival will be held at Siri Fort, New Delhi from July 10 to 20).