The Social Justice Film Festival was organized in Bengaluru

Bengaluru's Social Justice Film Festival focused on stories of caste, class, and gender inequality. An impressive nine films were presented at the 12th edition of the festival, which was held at St Joseph's College on May 11 and 12. Among them were Hansa Thapliyal and Lipika Singh Darai's The Outside In and Some Stories around Witches.

This year's 12th annual Social Justice Film Festival is a reminder that we live in an unequal world, says RP Amudhan, the festival's organizer, who organized the event at St. Joseph's College on May 11 and 12. SJC NOUS, a student-run co-curricular society, organized a two-day film festival as part of their Blue Pencil intercollegiate event. Nine films were shown over the course of the two days. To discuss social justice is to acknowledge that our world is not an equal one. Class, caste, color, and gender all influence how people are treated," adds Amudhan.

The Outside In, a film by director Hansa Thapliyal, was shown as part of the festival. For this film, Francoise Bosteels and Milan Khandakar, two artists who work with dolls in order to communicate stories, are the focus. Even as Francoise needles the threads into and out of her soft grasp to create a doll that resembles the comatose and profusely bleeding youngster, her aged hands are a thing of beauty.

He describes the film as being both "unusual" and "very usual," depending on your perspective. "Dolls are the central theme of the story. Items are deemed unworthy of attention because they are perceived to be too little, trivial, or unimportant. The work of these two artists is taken seriously by both of them."

When it comes to witches, there are many stories of women who have been falsely accused and then abused. This is the case with Lipika Singh Darai's Some Stories about Witches. When Pano tells the story of being forced to raise the dead, her voice breaks as she recalls being tied to a pole and beaten severely for refusing. This line, "We are meant to love, dance, sing, live, and not to suffer," is perhaps one of the most powerful ever said in human history.

There are migrant workers along the Kapashera-Gurgaon border that connect Delhi to Haryana's Gurugram in Tarun Bhartiya's Shramjeevi. Photographs of early morning employees lugging water buckets and nighttime shots of the city of Gurugram are included in this collection of photographs, which were taken with a lowered level of exposure.

Filmmaker Sanjay Barnela's 2017 documentary The Colour of My Home focuses on Muzaffarnagar's communal riots that uprooted more than 60,000 residents. Sanjay claims that the film begins where the media ends. It also raises a slew of issues. What exactly does it entail to put together a house? How quickly can these folks, who have been uprooted from their familiar surroundings, adapt to their new surroundings? Is this all worked out? A family's visit to their old residence, now overgrown with weeds, also serves as a clue in the film's resolution. Before she walks the final two steps to the landing, the mother touches a brick protruding from the wall, revealing the answer.

Bringing forth a Tamil rendition of Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Janani, is what Pankaj Rishi Kumar accomplishes in Janani's Juliet. Colorful splashes of humor and quick wit, as well as clips of him and the actors brainstorming about what their character would do, are some of the ways he does this. He does this in order to tell a true story, that of Shankar, a lower caste guy who was brutally beaten for marrying an upper caste woman in March 2016.

According to Dr. Arul Mani, St Joseph's College Dean of Languages and English Department Head, "Social justice dialogue is something we need to consistently invest in. New sorts of injustices are emerging, such as a pandemic, in our society. The laptop vs. no laptop divide has been brought to light in online classes. Some people's lives were made easier, while others were made more difficult.

Also shown at the event were Vinod Raja's Bird Trapper or Beggar, Kaggantu, Holy Rights, and Being the Other by Amudhan.