Literature, Cinema and Media decoded at Sahitya Utsav

Arun Kamal @ The Young Poet's Meet

New Delhi, February 21, 2013: Day four of Sahitya Akademi’s (National Academy of Culture) annual 5-day long literary festival Sahitya Utsav (Festival of Letters) was dedicated to Young Poets with a day long programme called Yuva Sahiti where young poets recite their creation.

A parallel seminar on Literature and Cinema and Literature and Media were held. One session where eminent literate  Adoor Gopalakrishnan  was the chair, who lamented that of late even Doordarshan, whose public mandate is to air public interest films, has stopped showing good films under the pressure of the need to be commercially viable. Girish Kasaravalli read a paper on Fiction into Film: Kannada Cinema; Vaasanthi read a paper on Fiction into Film: Tamil Cinema and Sanjay Mukhopadhyay read paper on Fiction into Film: Bengali Cinema. Second session was chaired by Chandrashekhar Kambar, who gave a brilliant overview of film scenario in India and then invited  Samik Bandyopadhyay to read a paper on Fiction into Film: Satyajit Ray and C.S. Venkiteswaran presented paper on Fiction into Film: Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Third session was chaired by Harish Trivedi and Om Thanvi presented paper on Fiction into Film: Hindi Cinema; Ganesh Matkari read paper on Fiction into Film: Marathi Cinema and S.V. Srinivasa Rao presented paper on Fiction into Film: Telugu Cinema.

Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay @
The National Seminar on Literature and Cinema

Seminar on Literature and Media was chaired by Tripurari Sharan, DG Doordarshan. Bodhisattva presented Fiction and the TV Serial, Rakhshanda Jalil presented paper on Literature and the Media, Sanjay Chhel presented paper on Literature, Culture, Television. In the evening, under the title Poetry as Music, Madan Gopal Singh performed Sufi Music.

One of the Akademi’s aims is to take the best of literary fruits to all - not just grown-ups but the youth as well.  Hence, alongside the seminar, Akademi also organized special events to attract interest and involve youth in whose hands rests the promise and future of our literary and artistic expressions.  Under this, a new programme Yuva Sahiti has been launched involving young writers.

Shabana Azmi adressing the Seminar

Festival of Letters is one of the biggest literary events in the country which has been organized annually by the Sahitya Akademi involving most active practitioners of 24 contemporary Indian languages from all over the sub continental. Dr Sreenivasarao: “Till now Festival of Letters has focused on themes of great relevance to the constantly changing and evolving trends in Indian literature but this year’s Festival of Letters, though focused on Indian literature, has widened its scope by exploring the relation between literature and other art forms both traditional and modern.”