Habitat Film Club
The Habitat Film Club was started in March 2000. A Member of the Federation of Film Societies of India, Habitat Film Club promises film buffs a rich fare of meaningful and entertaining films from across the world, Masterclasses and interactive sessions with Directors, Producers, Actors, Retrospectives and much more. Members are exposed to the wealth and variety of cinema - from the early classics to the
works of the new filmmakers as well as refreshing departures in mainstream cinema. It also aims to facilitate for members insights into the history of cinema and awareness on contemporary trends. The film club's two standalone annual festivals, namely Habitat International Film Festival in March celebrating critically acclaimed International Cinema, and Habitat Film Festival in May showcasing award winning Pan Indian Cinema, have become indispensable forums for film lovers in the city.
Membership Forms are available at the Convention Centre (Programmes Desk)
* Taxes as applicable will be added to the charges above.
Film Club Membership Fee
| Annual Fee | IHC Members | Non-Members |
|---|---|---|
| Single | Rs 480/- | Rs. 938/- |
| Double | Rs 720/- | Rs. 1250/- |
| Student (Over 18 years) | -/- | Rs. 375/- |
Membership Forms are available at the Convention Centre (Programmes Desk)
* Taxes as applicable will be added to the charges above.
Films This Month!
FILM - Life Flows On (2016/English/106 mins) Dir. Vishaal Nityanand. The film revolves around three Dementia patients and how their stories get connected. It follows the psychological and emotional process of a young woman’s life whose mother is suffering from Alzheimer's.The screening marks World Elderly Day.
Venue : Gulmohar
07:00 pm- FILM - Premiere Khufiya (2023/Hindi/157 mins) Dir. Vishal Bhardwaj. Krishna Mehra is an operative at an Indian spy agency known as R&AW. She is assigned to track down the mole selling India's defence secrets while grappling with her dual identity as a spy and a lover. Collab. MAMI Year Round Programme. Screening followed by Q&A with the filmmaker and lead actors. Open To IHC Members Only through prior online registration.
Click here to register.
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - Lutf-e-Lucknow: Khana aur Gana - A two-day festival of music and culinary delights of Lucknow. Day 1 Mehfil-e-Tarannum (Hindustani/90 Mins) a romp through the cultural journey of Awadh & Lucknow. Woven through couplets, songs and commentary based on different ragas and written in various Hindustani languages, featuring a musical & vocal performance by Askari Naqvi, accompanied by Zeeshan Abbas (Sarangi) and Niteesh Kumar (Tabla). Collab. Sanatkada & Naimat Khana. Tickets at Rs.500, Rs.350 and Rs.200 available online on bookmyshow.com and at the Programmes desk, IHC. Accompanied by an ‘Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival’.
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM - NMIC Chronicles of Timeless Treasures. A series of restored classics showcasing contributions by women in Indian cinema. Meera (1945/Hindi dubbed/136 mins.) Dir. Ellis R Dungan. Meera, a zealous devotee of Lord Krishna, considers him to be her husband. She gets married to Rana Bhojraj but follows her own way of living which is not acceptable to her husband and the society. Collab. National Museum of Indian Cinema and National Film Archive of India. Renowned Carnatic singer MS Subbalakshmi starred and sang in this film. She is the first musician ever to be awarded the Bharat Ratna.
Venue : The Theatre
07:00 pm - Lutf-e-Lucknow: Khana aur Gana - A two-day festival of music and culinary delights of Lucknow. Day 2: Dastan Miyan Azad Ki (Hindustani / 90 Mins) This Dastan is a carefully curated selection of 3 nuggets of different moods from Fasana-e-Azad. Authored by Pandit Ratan Naath Sarshaar, this gem of Urdu literature was hugely popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Artistes: Valentina Trivedi & Askari Naqvi. Collab. Sanatkada & Naimat Khana. Tickets at Rs.500, Rs.350 and Rs.200 available online on bookmyshow.com and at the Programmes desk, IHC. Accompanied by an ‘Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival’.
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Apocalypse Now Final Cut (1979/English/183 mins) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. A U.S. Army officer serving in Vietnam is tasked with assassinating a renegade Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
Starring: Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest and others.
This new version is Coppola's preferred version of the film. It is also the first time the film has been restored from the original camera negative at 4K. The original Apocalypse Now is considered one of the greatest war and action films. It is preserved in the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance.
Venue : Stein Auditorium
06:30 pm - FILM - Ghatashradda/The Ritual (1977/Kannada with Eng subs/120 mins) Dir. Girish Kasaravalli. A young Brahmin Vedic school student, who is from an aristocratic family, befriends his schoolmaster's daughter who is a pregnant widow. The boy tries but fails in concealing his friend's pregnancy. The widow has an abortion forced on her, has the eponymous ritual performed on her, and is excommunicated. The student returns home as his school shuts down. Collab. Express Film Club. Screening followed by a discussion with Shubhra Gupta, Film critic, Indian Express.
Venue : Gulmohar
07:00 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Beau Travail (1999//French with Eng subs/94 mins) Dir. Claire Denis. An ex-Foreign Legion officer recalls his once-glorious life of leading troops in Djibouti. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
"With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time" (The Criterion Collection). The film is one of many collaborations between Denis and her frequent cinematographer Agnes Godard.
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Kummatty/The Bogeyman (1979/Malayalam with Eng subs/90 mins). Dir. Aravindan Govindan.A trickster magician descends upon a village in Malabar, India, year after year, drawing children whom he transforms into animals through sorcery. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
Restored in 4K using the best surviving element: a vintage 35mm print struck from the original camera negative and preserved at the NFAI. Color grading was supervised by the film’s cinematographer Shaji N. Karun. The film is remembered for its creation of magical realism on screen sans any special effects' technologies available at the time.
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM & TALK - ONLINE Sublime Grace (on Art of the Gupta period). Talk and screening of the Doordarshan film followed by discussion by art historian, filmmaker & photographer Benoy K. Behl. The noble aim of the Indian artist of the Gupta period was to create a human form that rose above itself. It was not the human being caught up in the web of the material world. It was an embodiment of that which is eternal: that which is still, undisturbed by turmoil and cravings. Meditating upon such a form, devotees awakened the best within themselves. They rose above the pains created by their own desires. In these sculptures of the Gupta period, the Buddha, or the Enlightened One, personifies an inner calm, which the noise and confusion of the material world cannot disturb; when the armies of Mara have failed. The only true victory is that which is over the restless mind, the mind which darts about and will not be still.
Link to join:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83670855578?pwd=cWNVRmdkN0dwNC9CYkVBeDQ5cUh4UT09
Meeting ID: 836 7085 5578
Passcode: 838059
06:00 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Written on the Wind (1956/English/99mins). Dir. Douglas Sirk. Alcoholic playboy Kyle Hadley marries the woman secretly loved by his poor but hard-working best friend, who in turn is pursued by Kyle's nymphomaniac sister. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
Featuring an unforgettably debauched, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Dorothy Malone and some of Sirk’s most eye-popping mise-en-scene, this operatic tragedy, finds the director pushing his critiques of American culture to their subversive extremes (The Criterion Collection).
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Days of Heaven (1978/English/94mins) Dir. Terrence Malick. A hot-tempered farm labourer convinces the woman he loves to marry their rich but dying boss so that they can have a claim to his fortune. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard and Linda Manz
A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire—Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating a timeless American idyll that is also a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor (The Criterion Channel).
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Malcolm X (1992/English/201mins). Dir. Spike Lee. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation. Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his eventual assassination. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
With Denzel Washington as the lead, the film features memorable appearances by Spike Lee, the Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and the then-future South African president Nelson Mandela. The film is remembered for representing the civil rights movement in popular culture and is preserved in the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress for its cultural, historical, and/or aesthetic significance.
Venue : Stein Auditorium
06:30 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Thelma & Louise (1992/ English/ 129mins). Dir. Ridley Scott. Two best friends set out on an adventure, but it soon turns around to a terrifying escape from being hunted by the police, as these two girls escape, for the crimes they committed. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
With this pop-culture landmark, screenwriter Callie Khouri and action auteur Ridley Scott rewrote the rules of the road movie. Propelled by irresistible performances from Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (plus Brad Pitt in an attractive star-making turn)—and nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Khouri—the exhilaratingly cathartic Thelma & Louise stands as cinema’s ultimate ode to ride-or-die female friendship (The Criterion Channel).
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM - Restored Classics from Around the World. Ceddo/The Outsiders (1977/Senegalese with Eng subs /120mins) Dir. Ousmane Sembène. In protest against forced conversion to Islam, the Ceddo (the outsiders) kidnap King Demba War's daughter Princess Dior Yacine and hold her hostage. Collab. Film Heritage Foundation.
Ceddo is an ambitious, multilayered epic that explores the combustible interstices among ancient tradition, religious colonization, political opportunism, and individual freedom (Janus Films) by Sembene, often called the "father of African film".
Venue : Stein Auditorium
07:00 pm - FILM - Asamana Anasuya (2023/Docu/Telugu/94 mins). Dir. Seetha Ratnakar. A daughter documents the life and works of her artiste mother, Telugu music pioneer, singer, and author, Vinjamuri Anasuya Devi. Collab. Kri Foundation and Anugraham Classical Art Community.
Venue : Gulmohar
07:00 pm - FILM - NMIC Chronicles of Timeless Treasures. A series of restored classics showcasing contributions by women in Indian cinema. Bhuvan Shome (1969/Hindi/136 mins.) Dir. Mrinal Sen. A lonely bureaucrat goes on holiday to a Gujarat village where a young peasant woman helps him see beyond his job and develop a newfound empathy for people. Collab. National Museum of Indian Cinema. With this film, Mrinal Sen is said to have pioneered the Indian New Wave. It marked the debut of Suhasini Mulay and Amitabh Bachchan (voiceover).
Venue : Gulmohar
07:00 pm - FILM - Holy Rights (53 mins/ Urdu with English subtitles/ 2020/ India) Dir. Farha Khatun. Women are not allowed! Yet Sofia is determined to become a judge of Islamic Law. Tensions and negotiations that mark her journey are interwoven with Muslim women's fight for gender justice. Collab. Kriti film Club. Screening will be followed by Q&A with the filmmaker.
Venue : Gulmohar
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