T’puram: For decades, the Soorya Festival was inseparable from the presence of its founder and guiding force, Soorya Krishnamurthy. This year, as the festival returns to the state capital on Oct 1, it will open its curtains for the first time without the man who made it a cultural institution.The 49th edition of Soorya Festival, billed as one of the world’s longest-running arts festivals, will begin here on Thursday and continue for 111 days, bringing together more than 2,000 artistes from across India.The festival will feature a diverse mix of art forms, including music, dance, theatre, painting, talks, feature films, short films, poetry, storytelling and workshops. Carnatic vocalist K S Harishankar will present the opening programme.The first phase, the Dance and Music Festival, will be held from Oct 1 to 10, featuring artistes including Harishankar, Parshwanath Upadhyaya and troupe, Meenakshi Srinivasan, Priyadarshini Govind, Hareesh Ramakrishnan, Pallavi Krishnan, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, Asha Sarath, Navya Nair and Janaki Rangarajan.The Panchratna Women’s Lecture and Women’s Film Festival will be held from Oct 11 to 15, followed by the Choreography Festival from Oct 16 to 20. The Jalsaghar Hindustani Chamber Concerts and Sindhubhairavi Carnatic Music Festival are scheduled for Oct 21-25 and Oct 26-31 respectively.Nov will feature dance, music, theatre and film programmes, including a national theatre festival and a Malayalam-Tamil film panorama. The Soorya Art Gate, scheduled from Dec 1 to 20, will bring together around 40 painters.A Short Film Festival featuring selected award-winning films in various languages will be held from Dec 11 to 20. The festival will also host the Sugathakumari Literary Festival, a Mohiniyattam festival and a youth festival.The Indian Panorama Film Festival, organised in association with Directorate of Film Festivals under the Union ministry of information and broadcasting, will screen 20 films in various Indian languages from Jan 11 to 20. The festival will conclude on Jan 21 with a Carnatic music jugalbandi by M Jayachandran and Kavalam Sreekumar.
