Pune: To increase awareness about health issues and taboos, PM Shah Foundation has organised a Health Film Festival at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) where 38 short films and documentaries related to health will be screened.
The two-day festival will be held on December 21 and 22, and inaugurated by Padmashree Subhasini Mistry, a vegetable vendor from Kolkata who built Humanity Hospital in Hanspukur, Kolkata for the poor. Dr KH Sancheti, Senior Orthopedic Surgeon will be present for the event as chief guest.
Mistry lost her husband because they could not afford medical treatment, after which, she took on the mission to save money and build a hospital which will treat the poor for free. Her journey will be unfolded at the inauguration ceremony through a interview.
Adv Chetan Gandhi, Director of the Foundation, said the 38 short films and documentaries have been carefully selected from 90 entries received from around the world. The films that are to be featured include those in Marathi, Hindi, English, Bengali, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Nepalese, Vietnamese and Spanish.
From the last two years, the Health Film Festival has started a competition section. This year, film connoisseurs Dr Chandrashekhar Joshi, Jayashri Deodhar and medical practitioner Dr Leena Borude served as juries for the festival. There is no entry fee for the films participating in the festival.
“We thought that the same message of awareness about a health issue can be propagated better using an audio-visual medium. To reach a larger population, we started this Health Film Festival in 2010, and the initiative is expanding every year,” said Gandhi. In the last seven years, the festival has witnessed the presence of eminent personalities like Magsaysay Award Winner Dr Rajanikant Arole, Wilson Bejwada, former director of National Rural Health Mission Vikas Kharge, renowned eye specialist Dr Tatyarao Lahane, activist Vidya Bal, activist Hamid Dabholkar, actor Girish Kulkarni, Director Umesh Kulkarni and many more.
