Stepping stone to reel success

Aspiring student filmmakers have an added incentive to participate in filmmaking contests in various college fests this year. Jessica Luis reports.

Aspiring student filmmakers have an added incentive to participate in filmmaking contests in various college fests this year. Shamiana, a film club dedicated to short films, has tied up with various colleges to showcase festival winning films at their screenings in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Delhi, Baroda and Ahmedabad and also help the winners produce their short films.

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The club has tied up with St Xavier’s College’s Malhar, Jai Hind College’s Detour, KC College’s Blitzkrieg, Wilson College’s Polaris and the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay’s (IIT-B) Mood-Indigo.

In Mumbai, Shamiana conducts monthly screenings at Blue Frog and during the Kala Ghoda festival. Set up in 2008, the club accepts films from anyone across the world.

By tying up with college fests, the club hopes to reach out to budding talent and make the collaboration more structured, said Cyrus Dastur, founder, Shamiana. “In Mumbai, almost 30% of the films we get are from college students,” said Dastur. Access to technology and exposure to various films are spurring students to dabble in filmmaking.

At Polaris, Wilson College’s BMM festival, 15 college contingents signed up for Khamosh, a silent short film contest. “The fact that the winning film would get a launch pad through Shamiana was a surprise,” Keren Benjamin, events head, Polaris 2012 said.

“The best place for students to get recognised is college festivals. That is the first platform,” said Ishita Dharia, marketing head, Detour. Detour’s theme this year is Celebrating (100 years of) Indian Cinema, and contingents will be named after popular films like Don and Sholay. “The winning films will be screened all over India,” Dharia added.

“Shamiana will give a bigger stage to the winners to showcase their films at screenings across different cities, and also help students make their own films,” said Kumar Gaurav, head of the Live Your Passion campaign at IIT-B’s Mood Indigo.

“In getting their own film produced by Shamiana, the winners will get to work with professionals from the industry,” said Sach Arora, marketing executive, Malhar.

In January, Shamiana screen-ed Rockstar, a one-minute take on Imtiaz Ali’s film, by Aditya Mehta, a final year BMM student from SIES College, Sion. The film won first prize at the short film festival at Detour last year.

“Shamiana is an excellent platform to get more people to see our films,” said Mehta, who wants to pursue filmmaking.