Feb 01 2025 to Feb 02 2025 11 a.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Explore Bengaluru’s scientific, cultural, and urban heritage through the lens of cinema at the Sci560 Film Festival!

This two-day event features a lineup of thought-provoking films, including Down the Drain by Nitya Misra and In Search of Gold by Basav Biradar, each followed by insightful discussions with the filmmakers and experts. The festival highlights stories of the city, its environmental challenges, and its historical legacy, offering a unique perspective on Bengaluru’s multifaceted identity.

End each day with engaging activities, including a Bengaluru-themed quiz and a virtual scavenger hunt to test your curiosity and knowledge. This festival is part of Sci560: Science in the City, an ongoing exhibition exploring the city’s history through a military-industrial-academic lens. Don’t miss this cinematic journey celebrating the spirit of Bengaluru!

Festival Schedule: Download the full schedule here.

Day 1 | 1 Feb | Saturday | 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

11:00 am – 10:05 am: Opening remarks

11:05 am – 11:27 am: Down the Drain
Docu-fiction | English and Kannada | India | Nitya Misra
This is a documentary-fiction film about Bangalore’s sewage, told from the perspective of a woman who accidentally flushes a watch down the toilet. In tracing the journey that the watch takes from the toilet, the woman gets glimpses into the pipes and people that make up the sewage system in the city, and observes the system as well as its parts through conversations with different people.

11:27 am – 12:00 pm: Discussion with Nitya Misra and Veena Srinivasan

12:00 pm – 12:05 pm: Introduction by Usha Rao and Gautam Sonti

12:05 pm – 1:32 pm: Our Metropolis
Documentary | English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi | India | Gautam Sonti and Usha Rao

1:32 pm – 2:15 pm: Break

2:15 pm – 2:18 pm: A Stroke of Genius
Documentary Short | English | Vishnu Tenkalya

2:18 pm – 2:23 pm: HeadbangerLore
Documentary Short | English | Devadri Bhattacharya and Shrivathsa Srikanth

2:23 pm – 2:28 pm: Madiwalas of Bangalore
Documentary Short | English and Kannada | Rehaan Diaz

2:28 pm – 2:33 pm: Letter by Letter
Documentary Short | English | Pooja Saxena

2:33 pm – 2:38 pm: Reviving Legends
Documentary Short | Kannada | Sharan G C

2:15 pm – 2:18 pm: Tale of Two Wheels
Documentary Short | English and Kannada | Jayavartheni Krishnakumar, Namrata Narendra and Suraj Devaraj

2:42 pm – 3:16 pm: A Family in Bangalore
Documentary | English | India | Paul Zills

3:16 pm – 5:26 pm: Pushpaka Vimana
Feature | NA | India | Singeetam Srinivasa Rao

5:30 pm – 6 pm: Bengaluru Snap Hunt

Day 2 | 2 Feb | Sunday | 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

11:00 am – 11:36 am: Tracing the Arc
Documentary | English | India | Pankaj Bhutalia

11:36 am – 11:45 am: Anatomy + Humanities: The Animated Life of SL Bhatia
Documentary Short | Kannada | India | Meera K

11:45 am – 11:50 pm: Introduction by Gautam Sonti and Carol Upadhya

11:50 am – 12:18 pm: Fun @ Sun
Documentary | English | India | Gautam Sonti and Carol Upadhya

12:18 pm – 12:23 pm: Introduction by Gautam Sonti and Carol Upadhya

12:23 pm – 12:49 pm: July Boys
Documentary | English | India | Gautam Sonti and Carol Upadhya

12:49 pm – 1:15 pm: Discussion with Gautam Sonti and Carol Upadhya

1:15 pm – 2:00 pm: Break

2:00 pm – 2:34 pm: In Search of Gold
Documentary | Tamil and English | India | Basav Biradar

2:34 pm – 3:00 pm: Discussion with Basav Biradar, Nirmal Raj and Palahalli Vishwanath

3:00 pm – 3:05 pm: Babasaheb in Bangalore
Experimental short | English and Kannada | India | Mahishaa

3:05 pm – 3:07 pm: Kaathu Mela Kuppai Keezha
Experimental short | Kannada | India | Group4

3:07 pm – 3:24 pm: Presence
Documentary short | English, Hindi and Kannada | India | Ekta Mittal and Yashaswini Raghunandan

3:24 pm – 4:00 pm: Distance
Documentary | English, Hindi and Kannada | India | Ekta Mittal and Yashaswini Raghunandan

4:00 pm – 4:40 pm: Above the Din of Sewing Machines
Documentary | Kannada | India | Surabhi Sharma

4:40 pm – 5:00 pm: Break

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm: Bengaluru Quiz: How Well Do You Know the City?

Interactive Installations | 1 & 2 Feb | Sat & Sun | 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

Stick-er-alli Bengaluru: Mark your Bengaluru! Add stickers to a giant city map to highlight your most frequented areas and spots.

Hale Bengaluru, Fresh Memories: Share your oldest Bengaluru memory on a post-it and stick it to our wall of nostalgia!

City Soundscapes: Capture Bengaluru in 10 seconds! Record and upload your city’s sounds to create an audio collage. Listen to how our city sounds!

Time Capsule: Bengaluru 2025: Leave a little piece of 2025 behind! Add notes, photos, or objects to our time capsule for future Bengalureans.

In collaboration with:

Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB) is a not-for-profit public institution for research-based engagement targeted at young adults working at the intersection of the human, natural, and social sciences, and engineering, art, and design. SGB’s public engagement model moves beyond participation, and towards proactive involvement through ever-changing research festivals anchored by interdisciplinary exhibitions, programmes, and public events consisting of research-based engagements led by artists and scholars from diverse backgrounds. SGB is established with the founding support of the Government of Karnataka and three academic partners—Indian Institute of Science, National Centre for Biological Sciences, and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
Speakers
Nitya Misra
Filmmaker

Nitya Misra is an independent filmmaker based in Bangalore. Her films explore the drama of everyday life. Using different narrative techniques, she weaves video, writing, music, and digital media together to appreciate the extraordinary aspects of the seemingly mundane and inconsequential moments of the world around her.
Veena Srinivasan
Socio-Hydrologist

 Dr. Veena Srinivasan founded WELL Labs with a mission to bring the best available data and science to create transformational impact at scale. WELL Labs curates solutions and  builds the ecosystem of actors to improve human well-being and conserve the environment.

Dr. Veena Srinivasan has won several awards for her work, including the 2015 Jim Dooge Award for best paper in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Science from the European Geophysical Union and the 2012 Water Resources Research Editor’s Choice Award from the American Geophysical Union. In 2022, she was listed as one of the top-cited scientists in the world.

Veena chairs the Strategic Advisory Group for the Integrated Monitoring Initiative for UN SDG6. She was the Prins Claus Chair at Utrecht University, Netherlands from 2018 to 2020. She joined the board of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in January 2024.
Gautam Sonti
Filmmaker

Gautam Sonti dived into filmmaking soon after graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.  One of his interests has been the intersection of technology with our lives.  This has led to three films that enter the world of engineers and examine the impact of technology on society.  Many of his films follow the lives of people over time, sometimes years.  They have been screened at documentary film festivals around the world, but also at festivals that celebrate the ethnographic method.
Carol Upadhya
Social Anthropologist

Carol Upadhya, a social anthropologist, has researched and published widely on a range of social transformations related to development, economic change, urbanization, capital and labour, and migration in contemporary India. She is Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, where she leads the Urban & Mobility Studies Programme. Professor Upadhya’s latest publication is a co-edited volume (with Vinay Gidwani and Michael Goldman), Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). She is the author of Reengineering India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of Provincial Globalization in India: Transregional Mobilities and Development Politics (Routledge, 2018), and Co-editor of the Journal of South Asian Development (SAGE).
Basav Biradar
Writer and Filmmaker

Basav Biradar is a writer, filmmaker and film educator. He teaches film at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Basav’s writing has appeared in leading Indian magazines and newspapers. He is also the founder of Historywallahs – a history collective working on the history of Deccan.
Nirmal Raj
Physicist

Nirmal Raj uses math to find out how the universe was born, grew up, and got to have galaxies, stars, and physicists. A large fraction of his time is spent trying to fathom the nature of dark matter, an invisible and mysterious substance that makes up five-sixths of the mass of the cosmos. He teaches at the Centre for High Energy Physics at the Indian Institute of Science and writes layperson articles at The Hindu and The Print. You’ll often find him poring over cryptic crosswords, hiking up a hill, or penning alliterative poetry.
Palahalli Vishwanath
Physicist

Palahalli (P.R.) Vishwanath had his education at the Universities of Mysore and Michigan. He was a Professor of Physics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research(TIFR), Mumbai and a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics( IIA), Bengaluru. He has participated in several experiments in Cosmic Rays, High Energy Physics and High Energy Astrophysics in India and the USA. He has also been a science communicator for the last two decades; he has written articles in both English and Kannada. He has also authored more than ten popular level books in Kannada on various aspects of Physics and Astronomy. He has participated in many TV discussions on astronomical matters and often interacts with students from schools and colleges.