Pune's 'green' film festival to travel to 28 cities

As part of a green initiative, a film festival conceived here to develop awareness about environment will travel to as many as 28 cities spread across six states in the country.
"Kirloskar Vasundhara International Festival", which was confined to the city for the last seven years, screening world famous films and documentaries on environmental issues, has been receiving invitations from various groups based in a large number of cities and towns, working for the cause, according to Virendra Chitrav, director of the festival.
Set to start its outside run from drought-prone city of Solapur in Western Maharashtra on July 18, with a theme "Conserve water and safeguard future", the festival, which is to feature 40 films from 15 countries, will be screening films to reflect the regional environmental problems with a view to directing a possible solution.

"Our unit will be organising allied activities along the way like holding workshops to facilitate interactions with various social groups as well as common people to highlight the environmental issues and concerns," said Chitrav.
Describing the festival, jointly sponsored by various NGOs and Kirloskar Group, as one of the biggest event of its kind in the country conceptualised to create environmental awareness, he said a salient feature of the programme will be honouring of green activists residing in different cities with "Vasundhara Mitra" award to acknowledge their work.
"The screening of the films, documentaries and animated features made by world renowned directors to send across the message of environment preservation will be free. People coming for the shows will be required to sign a 'green pledge'", said Chitrav, who has been associated with a classical cinema movement called "Aashay" in the city.

The festival was becoming a vibrant movement with registration of over 5,000 delegates from the destination cities to which it will be travelling till January, he said.
The states that will be hosting the festival are Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa and Andhra Pradesh.