Focus of the Year 2012:
South Asia: LIVES & LIVELIHOODS
The greatest desire of human beings is to stay alive. It may seem simple, but it is this desire that keeps men and women engaged in the fiercest struggles on this earth. In the beginning, it was a struggle against the forces of nature. Then it became a struggle against other humans and clans, who were stronger than oneself and one’s own clan. Technology eased out the first struggle, but it turned the second into a complex warfare, since better technology has always been available to the more powerful.
Eventually human beings established social systems to protect the weak and the less privileged. In course of time, those support systems were exploited and began to be controlled by the strong and powerful. The systems, including governments, instead of becoming an arbitrator for the poor, became intermediaries in favour of the exploiters.
As the number of billionaires increases every year, the number of people who become poorer than the previous year is doubbled. ‘Development’ has indeed become the ‘development for the rich’. ‘Security’ becomes the ‘security for the affluent’. ‘Freedom of expression’ turns out to be ‘the privilege of the powerful’. And the stories of unprecedented economic growth that the political leadership in various countries cook up, very soon prove to be the ‘glorious’ growth of the already rich.
Since the 5th Edition onwards, ViBGYOR Film Festival, has been keeping ‘South Asia’ in focus, in view of calling attention to the pertinent socio-political circumstances and issues faced by nations and peoples in South Asia. Accordingly we focused on ‘South Asia: Democracy-Justice-Peace’ at the 5th ViBGYOR in 2010. ‘In the 6th Edition in 2011, it was ‘Political Filmmaking and Media Activism in South Asia’.
South Asia is home to some of the world’s richest and also of the largest number of poor people in the world. The region is plagued by poverty, lack of access to basic necessities and services and ravaged by conflicts of various kinds. Rampant unemployment, feudalism and abysmal living conditions of the large majority of people are further complicated by fundamentalist sectarian violence and state sponsored terrorism, both domestic and cross border.
ViBGYOR 2012, we hope, would become a platform for bringing various issues and struggles in South Asia into light. It will also showcase the bold attempts on the part of individuals and small communities to preserve the indigenous ways of livelihood in this region in an era of globalization and consumerism.
Through its varied activities, like the South Asian Conference, Campaigns, Mini Conferences, the C. Saratchandran Memorial Lecture, Face-to-Face with Filmmakers, Exhibitions, and film screenings, ViBGYOR-2012 will explore various issues of Lives and Livelihood in South Asia.
