IIC
The 13-film selection moves across Hindi and regional Indian cinema and Hollywood, bringing ecological anxieties into conversation with the pleasures and politics of film history. Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and Michael Dudok de Wit’s animated The Red Turtle (2016) approach nature through markedly different cinematic languages, from the spectacle of scientific hubris to the quiet, elemental rhythms of survival. Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan (1981) and Pradip Krishen’s In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones (1989), both recently restored in 4K, offer an opportunity to revisit films in which the textures of performance, place and period remain integral to their meaning. Other titles include Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Girish Karnad’s Ghatashraddha (1977), Gulzar’s Angoor (1982) and Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983), a satirical portrait of corruption whose comic surface conceals a bleak view of institutional decay.
Cinema screening The programme also looks back at films whose afterlives are being shaped by restoration.
Scheduled from October 29 to November 3, 2026, this year’s festival takes Prakriti: Ecology and Existence as its central theme, placing questions of ecology, cultural inheritance and human survival alongside artistic expression. Among its featured events is Palms and Parchment: Keralam’s Heritage of Reading and Relics, an exhibition opening on October 30 at 4 pm in Conference Room I. On October 31, at 3.30 pm, The Written Word and Social Progress: How Kerala Achieved 100% Literacy will examine the social and institutional forces behind the state’s literacy achievement.
From the fragile inscriptions of palm-leaf manuscripts to the moving images of cinema, the India International Centre’s annual festival, The IIC Experience: A Festival of the Arts, will explore how culture preserves memory, shapes public consciousness and mediates humanity’s relationship with the natural world. From Hitchcock to Speilberg at IIC Cinema, meanwhile, occupies a prominent place in the festival’s Stories on Screen programme, curated with support from the National Film Development Corporation of India, the National Film Archive of India and the Film Heritage Foundation. P ooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvathi Bayi of the Travancore Royal Family will attend as chief guest Taken together, the festival’s exhibitions, discussions and screenings suggest an expansive understanding of heritage: not simply as something to be preserved behind glass or recovered from a film archive, but as a living record of how societies read, remember, adapt and imagine their futures. Bringing together material from Kerala’s libraries, archives, museums and cultural institutions, the exhibition examines the state’s literary inheritance through its manuscripts, artworks and documentary treasures. Pooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvathi Bayi of the Travancore Royal Family will attend as chief guest, with Meenakshi Gopinath, Life Trustee, IIC, as special invitee. The exhibition is being organised in collaboration with the State Central Library, Kerala; the Oriental Research Institute and Manuscripts Library; Sri Chitra Art Gallery; Raja Ravi Varma Art Gallery; Kerala State Archives; Palm-Leaf Manuscript Museum; and Pusthaka Gramam, the Village of Books in Perumkulam. The exhibition’s focus on the written word extends into a public conversation the following afternoon. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test Get the latest Lifestyle News and more. Download the TOI app.