- Within 10 months of Oho Gujarati launch, we have produced nine debutant directors, six debutant writers and 34 debutant actors: Oho Gujarati and CineMan Productions founder Abhishek Jain
NE NEWS SERVICE
AHMEDABAD, MAY 14
The Indian Screenwriters Festival and the Business Literature Festival were inaugurated on the third and another action-packed day at the 9th edition of Gujarat Literature Festival (GLF) on Friday.
The GLF, the largest and the most popular literary event in Gujarat, is taking place at the Ahmedabad Management Association from May 11 to 15. More than 100 speakers, performers, authors, and artists will take part in GLF, which is taking place after a gap of two years.
The third day of GLF got off to a lively start with a free-wheeling discussion on the pros and cons of Over The Top (OTT) platforms for the entertainment industry among Abhishek Jain, RJ Devaki, Rakshit Vasavada, and Zubin Dubash.
Oho Gujarati and CineMan Productions founder Abhishek Jain said, “Within 10 months of Oho Gujarati launch, we have produced nine debutant directors, six debutant writers and 34 debutant actors. Thus OTT is the right platform for launching creative artists where quality content matters the most.”
Film producer and president of the Producers Guild of India, Siddharth Roy Kapur, inaugurated the Indian Screenwriters Festival, the exciting coming together of screenwriters from Bollywood in Gujarat. Kapur shared his thoughts about the changing world of entertainment in his keynote address. He also noted that literature is now not just written, but also created on the screen. Later, he spoke about the making of the web series Aranyak, which he has produced and features among the global top 10 non-English TV shows on Netflix.
Business icon Rajiv Bajaj inaugurated the Business Literature Festival. In his keynote address, the business icon spoke about Ikigai, a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose. He also had an interesting interaction with the audience. Earlier, he also had a private discussion with members of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) at the venue.
Another highlight of the GLF Day 3 was the discussion between authors who have translated well-known Gujarati language books into English and vice versa about the ways more of Gujarati literature can be taken to the world and how the best English books can be made accessible to a wider Gujarati reading audience. Sonal Modi, Bhagyesh Jha, Vivek Tailor, Samir Bhatt, and Vikrant Pande also discussed threadbare the challenges to the art of translation, its importance, and the future of translated literature.
Tabariya, a specially designed fest for children in the age group of 4 to 14, also got underway on Friday and witnessed a number of interesting and insightful sessions on storytelling, ways to popularise the Gujarati language among children, stargazing with storytelling, and much more.
“It was yet another busy and action-packed day at Gujarat Literature Festival. We extend our special thanks and gratitude to the business leaders, artists, writers, performers, and most importantly the audience for the tremendous response to all the programmes. We have many more events planned for Saturday and Sunday that will see diverse speakers and interesting discussions and talks,” said Shyam Parekh, Director, GLF.
A session on the digital world and the future of literature and various performing arts saw an interesting discussion between Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Ishira Parikh, Prabodh Parikh, Manoj Shah, Vinod Joshi, and Subhash Bhatt.
One of the most interesting programmes in the evening was the Iktara performance by emerging artist Hardik Dave, who is attempting to keep ancient Gujarati traditions alive through his art.
GLF, which has emerged as the biggest platform for new and upcoming Gujarati writers, also witnessed a number of book releases on the third day.
