Amateurs amaze with minute-long reel sagas

Fifty aspiring filmmakers from the Indian subcontinent got a chance to showcase their wares at a special 'Talent Campus' event during the ten-day Osian's Cinefan film festival here.

"We received a lot of entries from amateurs, students and documentary makers. They sent in a one-minute film each on the basis of which fifty participants were shortlisted from around 130," Neel Chaudhuri, Talent Campus (India) Coordinator said.

The final shortlist was an eclectic mix of entries ranging from animation clips, ad films and some innovative creations. All had one thing in common - each of them was exactly one minute long.

Be it Haridas with his various images of people waiting at a traffic light or Deepa with her depiction of a traditional marriage ceremony or Sanju Surendran, a sophomore at Pune's Film and Television Institute, who drew a parallel between the shattering of a child labourer's dreams and the shattering of a glass tumbler he is washing.

"Some of the work had definite technical finesse while others were innovative. There was even an ad film featuring Boman Irani. You had everything from alternate sexuality to a film on the Yamuna," Chaudhuri said.