Liberatum aims to connect Britain’s finest cultural and media minds with the rest of the world through world-class festivals and significant cultural celebrations.
Liberatum’s global festival programming ranges from opera, theatre, poetry, literary events to heavyweight discussions, debates, musical performances and visual art.
Kitab 2008 that will be held from 22-24 February in Mumbai in partnership with The Times, UK.
A host of literay stalwarts along with promising writers will participate in the two days of book readings, discussions, film screenings, poetry sessions and interactive fora that have been carefully structured balancing elements of literature, culture, theatre and creative dialogue.
Programs:
21 February
8pm Poetry Party and Dinner at Indigo hosted by KITAB
22 February
Venue : Asiatic Library 11am Poetry Session - Sharanya Manivannan
11:40am The Art of Fiction: MJ Hyland (MJ Hyland's second book 'Carry Me Down' was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006.) He will read a piece dedicated to the subject 'How To Write'. Hyland will also read a few short extracts from both her first and second novels, and talk about how they were written.
1pm The Author Hour (Namita Devidayal on her new book)
2pm The Director Speaks (Mahesh Bhatt on Sex in Indian Cinema )
3pm Young Mind Speaks (Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan talks about life as a young author in India )
4pm – Alliance Française Auditorium (Film Screening- EL Passado/ The Past; Brazil –2007 – 114 mins; Réalisateur : Hector Babenco; Acteurs : Mabi Abele, Mariana Anghileri, Mimi Ardu )
5pm Meher Pestonji's Play 'Feeding Crows' at Goethe Institute
6pm – Alliance Française Auditorium (Film Screening; The Voyeurs)
8pm GQ Party and Dinner at Good Earth hosted by Dylan Jones
23 February
Venue: Asiatic Library
11am Prince of Fiction (Niall Griffiths on darkness in contemporary fiction, interspersed with short readings from his own work.)
12pm Arab Visions (Robert Irwin presents a power-point presentation on Orientalist paintings including Vereshchagin's wonderful Indian canvases; Followed by a talk on 'The India of The Arabian Nights: The Arabian Nights of India'.)
1pm France at Kitab (Christine Jordis)
2pm Book and poetry readings - 10 poets and authors - in several languages
5pm Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke - Acclaimed German Artist Jonathan
Meese Exhibition; A Talk on Western Visual Arts in India Today
8pm Party at Bungalow 8 hosted by Pernord Ricard
24 February
Venue : Crossword Bookstore
12pm Going Against The Grain (To what extent is the woman writer going against the grain of her gender? Does she? Must she? Come find out through the words and voices of five contemporary women poets. Jane Bhandari, Sampurna Chattarji, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Menka Shivdasani, Marilyn Noronha )
1pm Observer of Life Booker 2007 shortlisted author Indra Sinha discusses his latest book with Shobhaa De and Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
2pm Gordon's Britain (Matthew d'Ancona gives a talk on what the future holds for the UK under Gordon Brown's leadership)
3pm English Muslim (Sarfraz Manzoor reads from his book followed by a talk)
4pm War and Sex (Julian West gives a fascinating talk)
8pm Vogue Party and Dinner at Olive
2 comments:
This year's event was less glitzy, but a lot deeper. The Festival, as many of you would know, was hit by an unseeming controversy in which baseless allegations against the organisers were flung around without a shred of evidence. The writers from the UK were unaffected, which was of course the proper thing to do. Sadly, our Indian celebs love a nasty ruck, replete with all the mud-slinging and chamchagiri. Those who went ahead with the meaningless boycott (without bothering to check the facts or get at the truth) included shallow personalities like Shobhaa De, Mahesh Bhatt and Amit Chaudhuri.
Anyway, in the end it was true blue writers/journalists/artistes like Indra Sinha, Nikki Bedi, Niagll Griffiths, Julian West, Matthew d' Ancona and Dolly Thakore who made the event a truly memorable one.
Sorry, my comment above was posted as 'Anonymous' making me look like a nameless accuser. My name is Aman, I am a Bombay-based blogger, and I can be reached at operaoflife@operamail.com
Aman K
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