Hyderabad Literary Festival 2022 to open online on January 28

For the second year in a row, Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF) 2022 will be held virtually. This year’s edition will air online (youtube.com/c/hlf-india) from January 28 to January 30. When the festival’s directors decided late last year to hold HLF 2022 virtually, it was a retrospective move, factoring in the possibility of a third wave of COVID-19: “It was a matter of planning an online festival.” It was a good call for the festival,” admits Amita Desai of Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad, one of the festival’s directors.

The HLF began in 2010 and, in its physical form, hosts multidisciplinary events – literary sessions, poetry, storytelling, workshops, performing arts, theatre, performing arts, workshops and film screenings. HLF 2022 will include online events in all these streams.

This year’s festival is dedicated to late Ajay Gandhi, the founder of Manthan and one of the former directors of HLF. Carnatic singer and writer TM Krishna will pay tribute to Mr. Gandhi on the inaugural evening, before talking about ‘Artistic Universe: Creative Spaces Within and Without’.

Mr. Gandhi had been associated with HLF since 2013 and worked with other directors – Professor T Vijay Kumar, Kinnar Murthy and Amita Desai.

The guest nation for HLF 2022 is the United Kingdom and the Indian language in focus is Punjabi. A panel discussion titled ‘Lest we forget 1984’ will focus on Punjab; Master photographer Raghu Rai and his wife Gurmeet Rai will interact with academician Usha Raman in the session ‘Amritsar: A City in Remembrance’.

In the past, HLF has attracted students and literature and art enthusiasts to its venues, giving way to a carnival-like atmosphere. Small focused groups logged in to watch the proceedings in the 2021 virtual edition.

The HLF team is aware of digital fatigue among people due to extended online engagement during the pandemic. However, on the bright side, the digital festival has enabled easier international participation.

For example, 60 minutes of interactive play The Art of Facing Fear: World United, includes 20 actors from five continents. The drama is set in a dystopian future in the post-pandemic future. Conceived in 2020, the play encourages audiences to share their fears and their tributes to their loved ones. Actors incorporate the text into the script. “The play acknowledges trauma and touches upon other issues that people are facing; In a non-preachy way, it addresses how we can deal with positive attitudes,” explains Sumit Lai Roy of The Red Curtain International, which has collaborated with Brazil’s Os Satiros group for the play.

Literary sessions will take place on a variety of topics and delegates will include Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee and artist Cheyenne Olivier to discuss his book. cooking to save your lifeKavita Rao for her book Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India’s First Woman in MedicineNandana Dev Sen on poems written by her mother Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Hyderabad-based writer Balaji Vittal and journalist Kaveri Bamzai discuss heroes and villains on-screen, and actor Divya Dutta leading women in cinema.

There will also be workshops, art exhibitions and movie screenings for children and teens by the Moving Images Group.

(See www.hydlitfest.org for the schedule)