TENT Biennale

The Theatre for Experiments in New Technologies or TENT is a Kolkata-based independent and alternative art space that “speaks to fluidities and experiments with media forms”. TENT, which was initiated in 2012, launched the Little Cinema International Festival for experimental films and new media art in 2014. The event, which was held annually until 2018, was reimagined as the TENT Biennale in 2020.

The festival brings together films, videos and art outside the circuits of dominant and mainstream systems. An average of 30 titles across experimental cinema, video art and new media works are screened at every edition of the festival, where activities and attractions also include talks, workshops and installations.

With support from Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata, TENT has regularly shown films from renowned German festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler DokFest, and the W:OW [We are One World] Art Film and Video Festival in Cologne. Other collaborators include organisations such as the Film and TV Institute of India, Pune; India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru; and Studio 21 in Kolkata.

Gusztáv Hámos’s The Real Power of TV (1991), Lubdhak Chatterjee’s Aahuti (2019), Lynne Sachs’s A Month of Single Frames (2019) and Vika Kirchenbauer’s Untitled Sequences of Gaps (2020) are some of the prominent works that have been programmed. Film scholar Ashish Rajadhyaksha, cinematographer Avik Mukhopadhyay, filmmakers Kamal Swaroop, Katja Pratschke, Qaushiq Mukherjee and Petna Ndaliko Katondolo and artists Appupen, Gayatri Kodikal, Pallavi Paul, Sahej Rahal and Sarbajit Sen are among the speakers and participants of previous editions.

The last edition of the TENT Biennale was held between 05 and 11 December 2022.

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