The IDPA in association with K.C.COLLEGE has commenced a series of screenings for BMM students from the 22nd of December.The first two films screened were previous years' IDPA award winners. The screenings were followed by a lively interaction between the Film makers & the students. This shall be a bi-monthly event which is part of IDPA’s endeavour to reach out to & interface with young & Student Film makers.
The two films screened were:
#1. Reflections by Bijoy Nambiar (Short Fiction)
#2. She write by K.P. Jaysankar & Anjali Monteiro (Documentary)
SYNOPSIS
‘REFLECTIONS’ by Bejoy Nambiar
Getaway productions made its debut with an ambitious 8 minute short film called ‘Reflections’ written and directed by Bejoy Nambiar. There are almost a hundred short films made every year in India but what makes this short film special is the association of a veteran like Mohanlal who is playing the main protagonist.The film is an abstract look at a nameless drifter, reflecting on his perceived notion of happiness. Within a span of 8 minutes the film attempts to seamlessly subject the viewer to an array of emotions.
26-year-old Bejoy Nambiar who made his directorial debut with this film has been an active theatre person, writing and directing plays under the Theatre Club of Bangalore headed by national award winning playwright Poile Sengupta. He has staged plays both in Bangalore and Bombay. Getaway Productions is a dream venture launched by Bejoy Nambiar to explore and produce diversified form of theatre and cinema.
Apart from being an avid Mohanlal fan since childhood, the reason why he chose Mohanlal to act in a short film is only because the script was written specially with him in mind. According to him the script demanded someone of his caliber, who can easily portray varied emotions on screen. The project might not have taken off if he had declined. Being overtly pessimistic while approaching Mohanlal didn’t really help, but Bejoy knew very well that Mohanlal in his never ending quest of doing something different might just agree to do the film. After a half an hour narration Mohanlal immediately agreed to get on board. Though initially unnerving to have an authority of Malayalam cinema act for a first time director, Mohanlal has gone out of his way to accommodate and make everyone comfortable on the GETAWAY team.
Apart from Mohanlal other actors who are part of the project are noted theatre personalities from the Bombay theatre circuit namely Juhee Babbar , Ahlam Khan, Sunil Santanam & Jaideep Pandit. GETAWAY hopes to release the film by August 2005. Preparations are being made to showcase it in numerous short film festivals all over the globe.
‘REFLECTIONS’ was showcased at the Black Welsh Film Festival, UK and was selected to be regularly screened for a week at the Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, Wales.
It was screened on NDTV as part of their Indie Film Club program where it was highly appreciated by renowned director Sudhir Mishra. It has already been screened at the following festivals
* IDPA Mumbai (Winner of best short film fiction) * International short film festival France * Dubai International short film festival
* New York Short film festival (Best cinematography Award)
* Cinema du Paris Short film Festival and various other film festivals
* South Asian International Film Festival
* Florence Film festival
* Black Welsh Film festival
* River to River Film festival
* Mocha Short film festival (Best short film fiction)
* Lille film festival
SheWrite by Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar
DVCAM, 55 mins, Tamil with English subtitles, 2005
Directed by Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayasankar
SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in the small town of Thuvarankurichi. She is able to defy and transcend family proscriptions on writing to become a significant voice questioning patriarchal mores in a powerful yet gentle way. For Kuttirevathi, a Siddha doctor and researcher based in Chennai, solitude is a crucialcreative space from where her work resonates, speaking not just for herself but also for other women who are struggling to find a voice. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. The fact that a number of women poets are resisting patriarchy and exploring themes such as desire and sexuality in their creative work been virulently opposed by some Tamil film lyricists, who have gone on record with threats of death and violence. In various ways, the dominant literary establishment has tried to threaten and rubbish the poets and their work. This has been resisted by a group of poets and other artists who have formed a collective called Anangu (Woman), which is attempting to expand the subversive creative spaces available to women writers and poets, across Tamil Nadu. Malathy Maitri, who lives in Pondicherry,
has been a Marxist activist. She is a founder member of Anangu.
Her poems attempt to explore and express feminine power and spaces. Sukirtharani, a school teacher in Lalapet, writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male-centred discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence.
Awards
· Best documentary Prize, IV Festival Internacional del
Documental Tres Continentes (IV Three Continents International
Documentary Festival, Venezuela 2005
· Indian Documentary Producers Association Awards 2005: The
First Technical Award for Sound Design and the Second Technical Award
for Cinematography
Festival Selection:
· 12th International Women's Film Festival, Turin, 2005
· Film South Asia, Kathmandu 2005
· Kara Film festival 2005, Karachi
· Platforma 2005, Athens
· Madurai Film Festival 2005, Madurai, India
· Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal, Canada
· Vibgyor Film Festival 2006, Trichur, Kerala, India
· Panithirai International Documentary Film Festival 2006,
Chennai, India,
· IAWRT Film Festival, 2006, New Delhi, India
· Beyond Bollywood, Stuttgart, 2006
· Ethnofest 2006, Berlin
· Festival of Visual Culture 2006, Joensuu, Finland
Telecast: YLE Finnish Television Network, Finland
Brief Bio
Anjali Monteiro is Professor, and K.P. Jayasankar is Professor and Chair, Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Monteiro has a Masters degree in Economics and a Ph.D. in Sociology. Jayasankar has an M.A. in German language and a Ph.D. in Humanities and Social Sciences. Both of them are involved in media production, teaching and research. Jointly they have won thirteen national and international awards for their films. These include the Prix Futura Berlin 1995 Asia Prize for Identity- The Construction of Selfhood, Best Innovation, Astra Film Festival 1998, Sibiu, Romania for YCP 1997 and the Best documentary award at the IV Three Continents International Festival of Documentaries 2005, Venezuela, for SheWrite. A presiding thematic of much of their work has been a problematising of notions of self and the other, of normality and deviance, of the local and the global, through the exploration of diverse narratives and rituals. These range from the stories and paintings of indigenous peoples to the poetry of prison inmates.
They have several papers in the area of media and cultural studies and have contributed to scholarly journals such as Cultural Studies. They are both recipients of the Howard Thomas Memorial Fellowship in Media Studies, and have been attached to Goldsmith's College, London and the University of Western Sydney. Monteiro has been awarded a Fulbright visiting lecturer fellowship for 2006-07 and will be attached to the University of California, Berkeley. They also serve as visiting faculty to several leading media and design institutions across India. They are both actively involved in 'Vikalp' and 'Films for Freedom',which are collectives of documentary filmmakers campaigning for freedom of expression. They are also associated with various media and voluntary organisations.
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