‘An Insignia of a Forced Winter’ wins Best Project award | The Asian Age Online, Bangladesh

The fourth edition of Dhaka DocLab, which provides an international platform for South Asian documentary project market in Bangladesh, has awarded Indian filmmaker Ajimesh Saha’s ‘An Insignia of a Forced Winter’ the Best Project award for this year at its pandemic-affected closing ceremony on Saturday, reports UNB. Having commenced on August 23, the first-ever virtual edition of this unique international workshop-cum-market pitching program also presented six other awards this year, chosen from a glittering field of brilliant project submissions

Presided over by Dhaka DocLab director Tareq Ahmed, the closing ceremony was joined by Liberation War Museum trustee Mofidul Hoque, Dhaka DocLab chairman Nasir Uddin Yousuff,  Founder/President of Documentary Resource Initiative (DRI) Kolkata and Indian director, editor and cinematographer Nilotpal Majumdar, Industry Producer at the Doc Edge New Zealand Keith Barclay, Managing Director of Congoo bvba, Belgium Paul Pouwels, Program Coordinator of the Documentary Arts Continuing Education Program at the Centre for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University in the United States Rahi Hasan and the participants and recipients of the awards.

Liberation War Museum trustee Mofidul Hoque said, “I would like to congratulate all the winners and participants of this year’s Dhaka DocLab, a great initiative which the LWM has been hosted since it’s beginning except for this year’s online edition due to the ongoing pandemic situation. On behalf of the LWM, we also welcome the mentors who really joined hands and made this a very successful event.”

“We have to give more space to the women according to our SDG goal, and it has been decided that the ratio of participation should be 30:70 but the goal is 50:50, and we hope that in next year’s edition of Dhaka DocLab, it will be a 50:50 participation and more awards go to the women filmmakers,” he added.

Thanking the participants, he also said, “It is really interesting to see how ideas are nursed and new creativities are opened up, and we look forward to all those young filmmakers who in this difficult times have opted for artistic expressions – which is not easy and not very supportive by the community, but we just inspired them anyway.”