Cine Impact Fellowship to nurture young talents of filmmaking

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New Delhi, Dec 30 (IANS) With time, filmmaking is witnessing a huge change and the emerging filmmakers are open to welcome new changes and accept the challenges.

To support these budding filmmakers, The Hyphen, a private firm has selected 10 film-making teams from around the country for making short documentaries on various social issues.

All teams will be provided training to create the documentaries. The best documentary will be given a reward of Rs 1 lakh. This will be in addition to the grant which each team will be getting for making their documentary.

The teams have been asked to give the short films for selection and each of them has given one short film. Now, on the basis of that they are selected for Cine Impact Fellowship. There are four jury members for deciding the winners - Saibal Chatterjee, National Award-winning film critic; Utpal Borpujari, National Award-winning filmmaker and film critic; Arnab Banerjee, film critic and journalist and Faisal Khan, film critic and curator.

Arpesh Mishra, founder of The Hyphen said: "We were pondering on ways to raise awareness around diverse social issues. In one of our brainstorming sessions, we felt there are so many young filmmakers who want to further hone their skills and showcase their creativity in a productive manner. That's how Cine Impact came into place and we then partnered with various organisations, film critics and filmmakers to create a successful collaboration. The idea behind the Cine Impact Film Fellowship was to promote independent storytelling on social issues among young Indian filmmakers. We wanted to bring the best filmmakers."

While talking about the selection criteria, film critic and jury member Utpal Bhorpujari said: "The films were chosen on the basis of the overall average of ratings given individually by the jury members. The jury looked at the films on the basis of treatment, concept and execution. Technical competence was also kept in mind but given that this competition was for amateur and student filmmakers who were working on miniscule budgets, more emphasis was given on the final outcome of the vision they started with."

He added: "The ideas that were presented in the films were wide ranging and relevant to the current times. Some of the films were good beyond the expectations of the jury. As someone from Assam, I am particularly happy that 'Dead Birds on the Wire', a film made by a group called Maati based in the small town of Golaghat, could make it to the final selection."

Aditya, a young filmmaker from the team Brain Tikka which includes four members along with him, namely, Harshil Tewatia, Harshvardhan Ojha, Arjun Roy. Their short film 'Diya' has been selected.

Aditya, a self-learnt filmmaker hails from Lucknow, and did BSc Honours in Mathematics from Delhi University. Talking about the shooting of the film, he said: "The idea stayed with me for a long time before it was executed, It took me a few weeks to write it down. The movie was shot in around a week, and we shot in colleges of Delhi University - South Campus, Satya Niketan and around Kailash Colony."

He explained the concept and said: "Migrating from a small town to a big city brings with it, a lot of apprehension and fear, especially for women who have been brought up in a patriarchal set up, and are maybe the first female in their family to move out. This apprehension is something I have personally seen, but it's not spoken about a lot. I did not want to showcase the new city as a threat, rather I wanted to highlight that something we consider a safe space, can also be harmful and it's necessary to listen when someone tries to tell you something. It is even more important to look behind what's spoken."

Harishwaran Raja, who is from Bengaluru along with his team member Koushik has made a short film, 'The Brahma'. It is a short film about two friends. Harishwaran and Koushik from the team Indian Academy Degree College took 5 days to complete the shoot. "We prepared 3 months ago before we went to shoot the film," said Aditya.

He added: "My short film, 'The Brahma' is a silent film, the initial idea was to make a social, dark comedy movie but we didn't have enough funds. So, I decided to make a silent film but it should be pure silent without even a single dialogue, so I decided one character should be deaf and dumb, other character is blind so basically there will be no conversation between them, we started like that. I directed the film."

--IANS

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