About Prakriti Foundation in No.15, Racecourse Road, Guindy, Chennai

Prakriti Foundation’s Main Festivals:

One Billion Eyes – Indian Documentary Film Festival

'One Billion Eyes' – the Indian Documentary Film Festival is an annual festival of short documentary films. The festival showcases India through a billion different ways, providing a billion different views on things around us that affect us and our lives in a billion ways. The aim has been to feature documentary films on the widest possible range of subjects. It was decided to take them on alphabetically, beginning with the letter ‘A’. The themes for the past have been ‘Art, Animal & Activism’, ‘B Cities’, ‘Caste’, ‘The Demonic & The Divine’ and ‘Earth, Ecology & Environment.’ This year’s theme is ‘Gandhi.’ [www.abillioneyes.in]

Park’s New Festival

The Park’s New Festival showcases cutting edge contemporary performance and visual arts by artists from around the world. We have been producing The Park’s New Festival in Chennai since 2007. In 2008 - 2009, the festival traveled to Delhi. In 2010 the Festival was also presented in Hyderabad and Kolkata. This year the festival was hosted in six major cities around India: Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. In the last five years, we have curated works by leading performers like Dr. Mallika Sarabhai, Vayu Naidu company (U.K), Preethi Athreya, Dr. Rekha Tandon (Bhubaneshwar), Ramu Ramanathan, Probal Gupta, Padmini Chettur, Zuilekha Allana, Jaimini Pathak, Anusha Lall, Park Hong Ki (Korea), H.R. Britton (USA), Ben Riepe (Germany), Vidur Kapur (USA), Anurupa Roy, Mahmood Farooqui, Danish Hussain, Parijat Desai Dance Company, Maya Krishna Rao, DNOAX, and Sandra Chatterjee. [www.theparksnewfestival.com]

Poetry with Prakriti

Prakriti Foundation has crafted a fresh new festival for the city of Chennai, around powerful and contemporary poetry. ‘Poetry with Prakriti’ was presented for the first time in Chennai in the year 2007. The aim is to get poets from varied backgrounds in multiple languages to read and share their poetry at many different locations across the city. This allows multiple groups of people to enjoy creative expression rendered through poetry. A total of 25 poets and about 100 readings are aimed here. What makes the festival unique is that these sessions are held in places as diverse as parks, schools, cafeterias, malls, large office complexes and bookshops, bringing poetry closer to people in a very special way. In association with the US consulate, we have hosted ‘Poetry Slam’ in Chennai for the past two years. In the year 2010, as a tribute to the victims of Tsunami, we hosted an all night poetry and music event. [www.poetrywithprakriti.in]

Tree of Life

The Tree of Life Festival is now into its sixth year and is usually celebrated in January across different venues in Chennai. Designed around the theme, ‘Nature, Chennai, Us’, the Tree of Life Festival aims to bring a greater awareness of trees and the environment that nurtures and sustains us, to school children and the larger community. It usually involves storytelling sessions and spinning workshops in schools, with performances by international puppetry groups, a nature walk, a sand castle building competition, and art in the form of a photographic and painting exhibition. [www.treeoflifefestival.com]

Hamara Shakespeare

Prakriti Foundation’s commitment to theatre brought us inevitably to Shakespeare’s work, except that we were interested in exploring the Indian twist – The result of this thought process was Hamara Shakespeare, a festival of three plays derived from Shakespeare. The first edition of Hamara Shakespeare was celebrated in 2007. The festival is unique as Shakespeare work is presented in various Indian languages. [www.hamarashakespeare.com]

‘Gharana’ Indian Music Festival

In a city dominated by the Carnatic tradition, ‘Gharana’ represents an opportunity for music lovers of the city to connect with the richly resonant art of Hindustani Music. The festival was held for the first time in 2006. The enthusiastic response led to ‘Gharana’, becoming an annual festival of Hindustani classical music. [www.gharanafestival.com]

Thiruvaiyaru Festival of Sacred Music

The Festival of Sacred Music was held for the first time in 2009. The main aim of this festival is to restore the pride of the Music Centre that existed at the time of Saint Tyagaraja, and showcase it for the NRI's, tourists, as well as the local people. The noble ambition of this event is, to bring music to the public, and to expose people to the various forms of music. We have plans to bring musicians performing sacred music from all parts of India and abroad in future. [www.festivalofsacredmusic.com]

The Short+Sweet Theatre Festival

Prakriti Foundation and The Blu Lotus Company presented ‘Short+Sweet, South India’ in Chennai this year. Short+Sweet Theatre is the biggest festival of ten-minute theatre in the world, starting in Australia in 2002 and held annually in 30 cities in seven different countries, including in India (Delhi) from last year. Forty three plays were short listed from over 100 scripts received, and 20 directors in the festival chose the final set of 20 plays that was performed over two weeks. From the top ten plays over the two weeks, six were picked by our panel of judges and four picked by audience vote, made it through to the finals. Prizes were awarded for the Best Play, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Script selected by a panel of judges, and also by Audience selection. [www.shortandsweet.org/chennai ]