The Minister of State for Home Affairs Shri Kiren Rijiju will inaugurate 7th edition of three day ‘Kathakar: International Storytellers Festival’ tomorrow at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts ( IGNCA), New Delhi. Member of Parliament, Shri Manoj Tiwari, Film maker and composer Shri Vishal Bhardwaj, singer and musician Shri Mohit Chauhan, Australian High Commissioner to India Mr Harinder Sidhu and Member Secretary, IGNCA, Dr Sachchidanand Joshi will also participate in the event tomorrow.

Kathakar is the only oral storytelling festival in India and is a part of Ghummakkad Narain- the Travelling Literature Festival which was started under the aegis of UNESCO in 2010. Kathakar is an attempt to not just preserve the art form but also create new audiences for the same.

Another highlight of the inaugural session is the launch of the book 'Curious Tales from the Himalayas' co-authored by Shaguna Gahilote and Prarthana Gahilote. For the first time, the festival in Delhi will also have a circus Act performed by children from the slums trained by Sweedish Circus master Andreo. There will also be stories of Deendayal Upadhyay and Nanaji Deshmukh, celebrated by the Government of India. Vishal Bharadwaj and Mohit Chauhan will be coming together for the first time to share folk stories through music. Adding to that will be the two puppeteers from Italy and Andhra Pradesh who are not just master of their work but also the last ones promoting and practicing the art.

Kathakar is a special initiative within the bigger festival, Ghummakkad Narain, to promote the oral storytelling tradition which has existed across the world. Though performance storytelling has seen a revival in Europe, in India only few efforts have been made to contemporize the art form. The festival this year will be hosted in the cities of Delhi, Gurugram, Noida and Mumbai. The partners for this year’s festival are the IGNCA of Union Ministry of Culture in Delhi, Heritage Transport Museum in Gurugram and the NCPA in Mumbai.

In the past, the festival has been addressed by (Late) Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Margaret Alva, Sunil Shastri, Mohit Chauhan, Nandita Das, Sushma Seth, Emily Gravett, Joanne Blake, TWP, Joseph Baele, Xanthe Gresham, among others. The main organizers of the festival are the NGOs Nivesh and HHACH.

 

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