Celebrating Life Festival ends in Rangamati

3 August 2009, 17:00 PM

Dwaipayan Baraua, Ctg

The two-day Celebrating Life Festival, jointly organised by The Daily Star and Standard Chartered Bank, ended in the hilly town of Rangamati last night with a concert featuring patriotic and modern Bangla songs and dance. "It's really an effective way to highlight various roles of women in society while such arrangement would also help remove prevailing negative attitude towards women," said an overwhelmed Ripa Chakma, a housewife, who came to the Rangamati Tribal Culture Institute to enjoy the concert. A daylong screening of films and documentaries, which won prizes in the Celebrating Life-2008 contest, was also held at the Rangamati Government College on Sunday as part of the festival. The concert began in the evening, but the small auditorium of Tribal Culture Institute became full of enthusiastic people by the afternoon. Delivering the welcome address, Editor and Publisher of The Daily Star Mahfuz Anam called on all to enjoy every moment of life and to overcome the problems with positive outlook. "By arranging such programme across the country, we are trying to search for young talented artistes who can depict different aspects of life with their creativity," he said. Mahfuzur Rahman, regional head of the Standard Chartered Bank in Chittagong, said the bank is honoured to be associated with such competition that could find out many creative artistes. Chakma Circle Chief Raja Devasish Roy thanked the organisers for arranging such programme in Rangamati. Artists of Spandan, a dance group from Dhaka, performed several dance numbers in the concert while singer Samina Chowdhury enthralled the audience with her songs.