G. Kalyan Kumar

The India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi will unveil its annual festival, The IIC Experience: A Festival of the Arts, from October 18 to 22 Oct 2024.

Theme wise, this 20th edition of the annual festival harps on the nationalist movement of India and explores its various contours, and the thematic focus has been christened “Kalpavriksha: The Nationalist Movement—Freedom and Identity.”

Addressing a press conference on October 9th, IIC Director KN Shrivastava and team explained the highlights of the annual festival program. The Director was accompanied by Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, IIC, and Kanwal Wali, Secretary, IIC.

Inauguration of the IIC Festival

The IIC Experience 2024 will begin with a curtain raiser on October 17 with the opening of an exhibition “Manuscripts and the Movement of Ideas across Asia.” This will be followed by a keynote address by well-known historian, Prof. Sugata Bose, at 6:30 pm.

Mr. Shyam Saran, President, IIC, will inaugurate the IIC annual festival on Friday, 18 October, at 6:30 pm in the Fountain Lawns.

IIC President Mr. Shyam Saran

The inaugural will be followed by Sampoorna—'I'Travel from Temple to Stage’ to be presented by Sharmila Biswas and team artists of Odissi Vision and Movement Centre, Kolkata.

The IIC festival will showcase an array of artistic activities in the outdoor and indoor spaces of the center. They include the following.

• Dance
• India Music
• Western classical music
• Jazz music
• Theatre
• Folk art
• Paintings
• Installations
• Photography exhibitions

Why is the nationalist movement in focus?

Explaining the relevance of relooking at various facets of the nationalist movement, the IIC team noted that the rise of a shared political consciousness has been at the core that pushed a change in people’s understanding of who they were and defined their sense of identity.

That consciousness also encouraged and fostered a revival in dance and music, crafts, indigenous traditions, the study and interpretation of classical texts, and many other knowledge systems. Together, these elements played a crucial role in shaping the national identity.

IIC Director K.N. Shrivastava

The inaugural function will be followed by programs like poetry reading from poems composed during the nationalist movement; Songs of Resistance, Songs of Hope by Sumangala Damodaran; Dhrupad Recital by Ustad F. Wasifuddin Dagar; and Tanashah, a solo dance drama by Navtej Singh Johar focusing on the prison diaries of Bhagat Singh.

Yet another highlight of the festival is special programs such as Jazz Concert by Buena Vista Jazz Band from Cuba and Didida—dance presented by Korean artists exploring mythological texts and memories that deal with collective consciousness of Koreans.

Three important exhibitions

At the exhibitions front, there will be three diverse exhibitions: "The Future of the Past" in which the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute will focus on the history and cultural records preserved at the Institute that is deemed a fountainhead of Orientology.

“Khadi: The Fabric of Freedom, the Language of Fashion” will trace Khadi’s transformative journey across time and an instrument of resistance to a symbol of conscious living and modern fashion.

The exhibition “Scenes from Santiniketan & Benode Behari’s Handscrolls” at the Art Gallery will present the earliest and longest handscroll ever painted by Benode Behari Mukherjee, depicting the landscape of Santiniketan in the 1920s.

The release of the latest IIC Quarterly: Autumn 2024 will be another highlight of the IIC annual festival. The latest IIC Quarterly will be released by N.N. Vohra, Life Trustee, IIC. The issue will cover two significant contemporary topics—the 2024 general elections and the Manipur situation, among others.

Expert talks on nationalist movement

The IIC festival 2024 has considerable space for ‘expert talks’ that will analyze different aspects of the nationalist movement. Prominent topics and speakers include the following.

• Nationalism and Popular Cinema by Prof. Ira Bhaskar
• Bose & Bose: Making of the INA by Prof. Rudrangshu Mukherjee
• Pioneers of the Modern Renaissance of India by Prof. Pradeep Apt;
• The Shaping of Modern Indian Science by Dr. P. Balaram.

Film Carnival with comedy films

According to the organizers, the film carnival of comedy films will also lessen the high seriousness of the festival’s deliberations and themes.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, award-winning filmmaker and archivist, will curate the Carnival of Comedy Films as a festival of classic comedies from the days of silent movies to the unforgettable oeuvre of Ernst Lubitsch, Jacques Tati, and others.

There will also be special screenings of films like Shyam Benegal’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and that of The Forgotten Hero; and Ekla Chalo by Nachiket Patwardhan.

Food festival

Cuisine is also an important part of the IIC Experience this year. The IIC President also underscored the cultural element behind the food festival as part of the IIC annual festival 2024.

Aptly named “Celebrating the Home Chef,” the food festival features some of the best and most diverse food fare. It will be curated by Sourish Bhattacharyya of “We the Chefs.”

• Under the Chinar: A Kashmiri Wazwan Feast by Chef Saleeth Nisar
• The Street Treats of New Orleans by Chef Jayita Sengupta
• God’s Own Table by Chef Rekha Raghavan
• Banglar Ranna by Chef Chitra Ghose
• Flavours of Southeast Asia by Chefs Jayita Sen and Abhishek Nawal

Jayita Sen

According to the IIC Director, the importance of IIC Experience is in conceptualizing events in a powerful way to bring together a galaxy of talents prominent in the arena of visual and performing arts and present a rich and diverse experience.

The IIC spectacle will also reinforce and epitomize the Center’s six decades of glorious existence as a space that celebrates diversity, freedom, innovation, creativity, learning, and entertainment.