TENT, Kolkata, is a non-profit making platform, initiated and managed by Madhuja Mukherjee, and Avik Mukhopadhyay. Since 2012, TENT is fostering an alternative art space in order to facilitate experiments with moving images. At the time when the media scene is intersected by multiple screens, medium, forms and aesthetics; moreover, boundaries between arts and producer-audience, as well as sites of production and exhibition are becoming increasingly fluid, TENT attempts to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
TENT is creating persuasive linkages between art practitioners and researchers through regular screenings, shows, talks, workshops, residencies, and (inter-)national collaborations. It is currently located in a residential area, in a heritage building, in Kolkata. TENT aspires to become a place where artists from disparate fields can come together to expand and redefine the significance of art, cinema and media cultures with regard to its peoples. It is a space for independently produced and innovative works that reinvent practice as praxis.
TENT intends to generate a forceful and perceptible network between various marginalized arts and artists across the globe. In 2014 TENT launched LITTLE CINEMA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL for experimental films and new media art. ‘Little Cinema International Festival’ collaborates with Goethe Institut-Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata and Studio 21, Kolkata, and with India Foundation for Arts, Bangalore and Film & TV Institute of India, Pune. It has screened films from Berlinale, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler Dok Fest, W:OW Art Film and Video Festival and programmes curated by Difference Screen, UK and Unbound Studio, India and others.
Inspired by Dziga Vertov and his thesis of “Kino-eye”; as well, by borrowing from Robert Bresson, the organisers believe that film is not merely a “reproduction”, but a practice, a process, and a “creation”. Hence, it selects films which question established norms of cinema and explore the medium, and its various forms. Celluloid, video, and now digital formats, facilitate us to look at the world in new ways. “Experimental” and “alternative” films – sometimes reflective, sometimes discursive, and at times dialogues — renew our relationship with history, technology and political action. Moreover, the expression “Little Cinema” does not imply small-budget or short films, or films for the inexperienced, rather, it draws from the long drawn strife over “Little Film”, “Little Magazine” and “Little Theatre” in Bengal, and their intense interconnectivity.
LITTLE CINEMA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL brings within our purview of knowledge films, video and art, which flow outside the circuits of dominant and mainstream structures.
Write to us: tent.littlecinemainternational@gmail.com
TENT address: 4, Bipin Pal Road, Kolkata-700026
TENT office: 58/125, Prince Anwar Shah Road, Kolkata-700045
Little Cinema International Festival Team:
Festival Chairperson: Avik Mukhopadhyay
Festival Director: Madhuja Mukherjee
Programme Coordinator: Antoreep Sengupta (2018)
Programme Management: Bitan Basu (2018)
