Indian origin filmmaker Ben Rekhi feels film festivals hold a lot of significance at any stage in one's career. Rekhi, whose documentary "The Reunited States" has been shown at multiple film festivals, adds that cinema is an experience that needs to be enjoyed with others.
"I think at any point in a career, film festivals are of tremendous value for both the filmmaker and the audience to interact with each other. Cinema is meant to be a shared experience, which is suffering now owing to the closure of movie theatres over the past year. Film festivals are places where we are able to meet each other in person," Talking about his documentary, he says he is happy to be able to depict what is happening in the world through his films.
"'The Reunited States' came to me after the 2016 elections. I had typically done fictional films up until that point but the landscape of US politics had changed and I became fascinated with how my work could inform this new reality that we found ourselves in. So, the idea of non-fiction and turning the camera around on reality to try and understand it and help us manoeuvre became an obsession for me," he says.
Source : IANS