India’s Anant National University recently hosted an international festival of moving images aimed at students and academic practitioners, Mooo Fest. The five‑day event was held in November focused on cinema and moving image practices within a global, future‑oriented framework.
Mooo Fest 1.0 provided attendees with an opportunity to examine cinema as an evolving language that brings together creative practice and technology, through live‑action filmmaking, animation, sound design, text‑based storytelling and emerging media.
“Mooo Fest is a celebration of creativity, curiosity and collaboration. It deepens our students’ understanding of moving images and prepares them for the rapidly evolving cinematic and media industries. By bringing global perspectives to our campus, the festival enriches our students’ worldviews while keeping their practice rooted in context,” shared Anant National University school of design moving image programme lead and professor Sekhar Mukherjee.
The inaugural edition welcomed artists, educators, animators and practitioners from India and around the world. The attendees included VilAA (Lithuania) interdisciplinary artist Gailė Cijūnaitytė; Vilnius Academy of the Arts Lithuania associate professor and artist Gintarė Valevičiūtė Brazauskienė; KHM (Germany) animation director and educator Isabel Herguera; KHM (Germany) sound design Hans Koch; Custom Nuts Studio (Tokyo) founder Silas Hickey; award-winning animator Vaibhav Kumaresh; HSLU (Switzerland) visual artist and educator Francoise Chalet; Trip Creative Service (Mumbai) founder director and board of studies member Prateek Sethi; and master students from KHM (Germany) among others. Their participation transformed Mooo Fest into a vibrant global exchange of ideas, methods and artistic approaches, enriching both dialogue and practice.
Strengthening Anant’s existing relationships with its international academic partners, the festival became a platform for deepening collaboration and reimagining how filmmaking is taught and learnt. Through workshops conducted by global practitioners, panel discussions on contemporary and emerging practices, screenings of films from around the world and informal interactions between students, faculty, filmmakers and media artists, Mooo aimed to create a continuous loop of observation, engagement, critique and creation.
Mooo also brought an intellectual depth to its programming and acknowledged that visuals and sound have shaped human experience since the earliest civilisations. In today’s digital era, arguably the most recorded and documented period in human history, the moving image play a profound role in shaping communication, culture and collective memory. By placing student learning within this broader historical and societal context, the festival positioned moving images as both an artistic expression and a vital contemporary language.
The fest reflected the university’s commitment to creating a holistic learning environment that is grounded in the local context while remaining globally relevant. True to Anant’s mission of preparing solutionaries equipped for the challenges and opportunities of the future, the festival brought together industry leaders, academicians, researchers, students and the wider Anant community on a single platform to celebrate the moving image, share knowledge and advance creative inquiry.
