Festival de fotografia

PRESS RELEASE

Chobi Mela V: Freedom
Dhaka, Bangladesh
January 30, 2009 – February 20, 2009
· The biggest photo festival outside of the West.
· Over 60 exhibitions, 35 participating nations, well over a 1,000 images, and over 50 visiting artists from Asia alone, interpreting this year's theme, "Freedom".
· All major events to be live-casted, with the biggest viewership worldwide.
· Mahasweta Devi, Noam Chomsky and Stuart Hall, three living legends on live videoconference at opening of Chobi Mela V.
· AWARDS: The Lifetime Achievement Award for Chobi Mela V in 2009 goes to RICARDO RANGEL of Maputo, Mozambique.

A scholarship to a rural photographer will again be given this year, in the name of Ricardo Rangel. Ricardo Rangel, the doyen of Mozambican photographer, will be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Chobi Mela V, 2009 (http://www.chobimela.org/).

The award will be presented at the festival's opening ceremony on January 30 at the Bangladesh National Museum. Andrew Esiebo, a participating artist from Nigeria whose work "Living Queer Africans" will be exhibited at the festival, will be accepting the award on behalf of Rangel.

Born in 1924 in Maputo, Rangel is widely regarded as one of Africa's outstanding photographers in the area of photo reportage, and as chief photographer of "Tempo", the country's first newsmagazine, he explored and extended the possibilities of photojournalism as a form of active political dissent, recording the dramatic events that led to the end of Portuguese rule and the birth of an independent Mozambique in 1975. This year's theme of "Freedom" comes at a timely moment as events continue to unfold in Palestine and as Bangladesh itself settles after an election that is a harbinger of democracy.

The theme follows in the festival's tradition of exploring a broad social subject of global significance, and will be inaugurated by the launch of a unique multimedia exhibition offering a retrospective on the life of Nelson Mandela, "The Long Walk to Freedom". The opening ceremony also includes a live videoconference to be broadcast on the internet between three outstanding champions of freedom, Mahasweta Devi, Noam Chomsky and Stuart Hall.

Other exhibitions include "Buena Memoria", Marcelo Brodsky's work on the forced disappearances in Argentina, "A People War" on Nepal's road to democracy and "Bangladesh 1971" – all showing collective struggles to overcome regimes of oppression. Work by Iraqi women and Palestinian refugees casts an unflinching eye on the daily realities they confront. With over 60 exhibitions from photographers of 35 nations from every continent of the globe, the photographic extravaganza will be held from January 20 till February 20, 2009, at various locations across Dhaka city. Other than a series of workshops and portfolio reviews for local and visiting photographers, there is also a week-long series of evening presentations, slideshows and seminars.

Many visitors will also be looking out for the mobile exhibitions, now a trademark of the festival, where a mini Chobi Mela on ten rickshaw vans, plying the streets of Dhaka, will move the festival away from galleries to the more public spaces of football fields and open air markets.

For as festival director, Shahidul Alam states, "In both the majority and minority worlds, across cultures and across nations, the class divide continues to be the biggest bridge to cross.

"The largest photography festival outside of the West – Chobi Mela is the first and most significant photography festival in Asia and held every two years by Drik Picture Library, the principal organiser of the festival.

Since the first launch in 2001, the festival has grown enormously over the years and is now the highlight of the Asian photographic calendar, with quality, quantity and variety of entries far exceeding previous submissions.

The festival has always drawn visual artist from all continents of the globe, and concentrates on showcasing original work being produced worldwide, but especially in Asia and the rest of the majority world.