16122017-8n5a6377Sunday  17, day two: Calling all children: Where R U?  Sunday is usually devoted to kids at the Film Festival!  This is when the kids get to watch their own movies.  There were 14 films made by students of the bioregion lasting a bit over an hour.  And all these movies were screened from approximately 4-5pm.  By convention the children should have cast their  ballots for their favorite film – the winner captures the coveted Mongbra Trophy.  However this format wasn’t followed this year because after the AV student’s movies – the students are treated to all the children’s movies in the HUMAN UNITY category.  After watching these movies the children were released into wilds of Town Hall…and hopefully they voted for their favorite movie…We’ll know who the winner is next Saturday after the ballots are counted.

Food on tap?  Many of us who have more or less camped out at Town Hall for the past several days have used as our sustenance the Town Hall café, consuming large amounts of tea, juice, vadhai, iddlies and doshas…however Sunday many Auroville eateries are closed so our breakfast & lunch breaks were looking dim – but we scored!  Tanto Pizza to the rescue! Yum pizzas!!  And for dinner we were treated to the East Asian Pavilion (Korean, Japanese, Chinese/Taiwanese – however most of the food came from Korea? and their legions of volunteers.

For entertainment we were treated to Shrini Yatra’s troupe with a cast of 100’s (maybe a bit less).  From traditional sitar and South Indian dance to comedy, drumming and drum troupes.  This was a great way for the children to be entertained. OTHER??

A large, appreciative and vocal crowd:  This year’s Kino Kaberat was screened to all (who were at the venue)!  At 7pm all the Kino Kabaret movies were shown to a large, appreciative and vocal crowd of onlookers.  The crowd was not disappointed with the movies that were created within the 50 preceding hours.  It looks like Kino Kaberat is going to be an institution at the AVFF.

Good Movies:  There were some really good movies for big people on Sunday…and we were treated to insights of director Eugénie Dumont who made a great movie on Aborigines of Australia.  But the real sleeper was My Burning Heart…

Side note: This year’s film festival has a number of FIRST, the AVFF was the first official event of the 50th jubilee year celebration.  The first time we had a concurrent Food Festival.  The first year of our Carbon Neutral project.  The AVFF wanted to recognize the exemplary reforestation work that AV is known for.  So we started this fund via a crowd funding platform, where people donated money and for their reward we (Forest Group) plants a trees that go on extracting CO2 from the atmosphere for the life of the tree.  Tropical trees can do this year-round whereas trees in temperate climates can only do this during the warmer months of the year.  We were able to donate RS7000 to the Forest Group to plant trees.   This year was a first for an 8 day event (normally it’s 5 days).  And lastly it was the first year we introduced the Kino Kabaret.