Ashutosh Centenary Hall at the Indian Museum was abuzz with the vibrancy of the creativity of the students of Arena Park Street during their annual CG exhibition and placement mela Drishti 09 on the 30^th and 31^st of May 2009.

Day -1: Kolkata, May 30^th:
The exhibition was inaugurated by the noted cartoonist Chandi Lahiri. Speaking on the occasion, Lahiri Said “Students shouldn’t clamour for jobs but concentrate on their work and practice at least 100 drawings every day. If they practiced hard enough, the jobs would come automatically”. He went on to emphasise that computers were meant to create what the artist wants and not dictate the outcome of the work. It should be used as a mere tool. Mr. Lahiri was kind enough to sketch an image for the waiting audience.

More than 110 students submit about 165 works in the categories of Cartoons, Caricature, Digital Art, Visual Story, Film Poster & Animation Film

“For the first time ever even the faculties of our institute have made animation films and are competing for a cash reward of Rs. 5000/- in a separate category” said Paromita Dutta, the Drishti Coordinator. “To my knowledge, no other institute in India has ever attempted this and the whole purpose of this exercise is to inspire and motivate the students into making more and better animation films” said Dutta.

The judges, Sarbajit Sen (Independent Cartoonist & Film Maker), Amit Sengupta (FTII, Pune alumnus and Film Maker) & Shilpi Chauhan Chakraborty (Freelancer & NID Alumnus) were impressed by the work and felt that the overall quality of student films was as good, if not better than the faculty films.

The highlight of the day was the screening of the faculty films for which most of the audience was keenly waiting. “Deserted” a blend of narrative and non-narrative styles, made by Saikat Mazumder (Centre Academics Head) and Somraj Chatterjee (2D Faculty) about the state of mind of a terrorism victim was simply amazing and deservedly won the first prize in this category

The second prize went to “Jai Ho” by Arundhati halder and Arnab Chatterjee about “Rights being Wronged” by the politicians.

“Journey to Hell”, the 3^rd Prize winner was a short story about effects of smoking and had a tremendous impact on the audience.

In the students’ category, “Destination” an experimental film in stop motion was an instant hit with the audience and they simply loved its look and feel.

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The 2^nd prize went to “Nightmare” a 2D film and the 3^rd prize was won by another stop motion experimental film “Every Minute Counts”.

The results of the other categories are listed below:

Cartoons
Winner	Tapon Roy
Runner-up	Soam Sankar Samanta
Runner-up (2nd)	Anthony J. S. Dingdoh
Caricatures
Winner	Runa Bose
Runner-up	Tapon Roy
Runner-up (2nd)	Gopal Krishna Chan dra
Digital Art
Winner	Subhamay Sarkar (Fashion)
Runner-up	Deepak Nonia (Yeh jo desh hai mera)
Runner-up (2nd)	Jerry Chan Lyngdoh (Sargam)
Visual Story
Winner	Anthony J. S. Dingdoh
Runner-up	Debashish Biswas
Runner-up (2nd)	Saikat Saha
Film Poster
Winner	Jahangir Alam
Runner-up	Subrata Singha Mahapatra
Runner-up (2nd)	Khokan Pal

The icing on the cake for Day-1 was the face painting which was an instant hit and the students thoroughly enjoyed getting their faces painted with vivid and outrageous graphics ranging from football, spider, butterflies, lizards, dragons and even animals. Ramesh Ruia, the Centre director was seen proudly sporting an “Inca” look on his face painted by the students. The frenzy to get their faces painted continued till late in the evening and the students thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Day – 2, Kolkata May 31^st:  

Another action packed day with activities and the hall was packed with students, their parents and friends. The highlights of the day were the Magic Show and The Ventriloquist with his puppet. The icing on the cake was the Placement Mela in which two companies interviewed about 65 students.

The students, specially the prize winners were seen proudly escorting their parents and friends to see and appreciate their respective works.

Saikat Mazumder, the Academic Head said that the best part about an event of this nature is the fun everyone has, initially to compete and later while enjoying the appreciation not to mention participating in the various activities. “We all had fun making the films and it shows in the works. We have successfully weaned away the students from thinking just software and the results are visible in the number of experimental films produced this year.” He went on to add.

Ramesh Rui was extremely elated by the show and said “This year we have enlarged the canvas of Drishti by holding a placement mela along with the exhibition which has boosted the confidence of the students and helped the recruiters to identify potential talent. The thing to note is the paradigm shift from directionless computer works to the creative side of student’s talent. The categories like Visual Story, Caricatures and Cartoons and films have been attempted keeping in mind the requirement to develop the Pre-production skills of our students. Next year we plan to add the dimension of master classes by industry experts and convert the exhibition into an annual fest for our students”.

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