24th June 2016, Friday
The screening of the National Award winning documentary FORESTING LIFE took place here at the Centre today. The filmmaker, her initiative and the man who created the forest (Jadav Payeng) received much appreciation and the deserved applause. The following was the synopsis of the documentary:
Foresting Life presents the remarkable story of one man’s drive to create the world’s first man-made forest on a sandbar – in a world where uncaring eco-terrorists undertake deforestation. It is the biggest forest in the middle of the river Brahmaputra in Assam, India. The documentary takes an inside look at the life of Jadav Payeng who single handedly planted trees over the last 35 years and transformed a 1400 acre sandbar into a self-sustaining forest ecosystem.
After getting neglected by almost everyone, despite his great work, Jadav raises a question, “When you have sacrificed everything for the nation’s glory and achieved so much that no one can even imagine, and then realize that nobody even cares about it… What are you supposed to do?”
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: Aarti Shrivastava is a national award-winning Indian documentary filmmaker & Asia 21 IPRYLI Fellow based in Mumbai. Her quest to tell human stories with a vision to drive change led her to produce documentaries, which got her global acclaim. She has also managed production on Bollywood film projects like Kick, My Name Is Khan and the reality show Sur Kshetra. She has directed two award-winning documentaries ‘Land of Widows’ and ‘White Knight’ which were well received in the international festival circuit. ‘Foresting Life’ is her third documentary.
