Film festival based on water conversation held in the city

The international short film festival - Jal Katha 2019 was a small step towards highlighting the common man’s role in protecting and avoiding wastage of this natural resource. Films submitted to Jal Katha 2019 were screened on Sunday in the presence of a large audience at the CV Raman auditorium in the IISER campus. The festival was graced by Prof Shyam Rai, Dean of faculty at IISER, Pune, Prof SN Rajaguru, and many other Geoscientists and people from different walks of life.The final award selection was done by a professional jury comprising of film scholar Gayatri Chatterjee, Shashank Deshpande, an eminent hydro-geologist, Dr VS Rao, a scientist with IISER and Vivek Kannadi of the media centre at IISER. Of the numerous entries received for the contest, 10 films were selected for screening. All the films screened were well appreciated by the audience. Three films – two for the silver award and one for the gold were selected by the eminent jury. The silver awards were bagged by 'Udakam', a film made by Rohen Jadhav and Aswastha Ujani directed by Kiran Joshi. 'Tarsh', a film made by Tejas Patil bagged the Gold award.