Noted German director Arend Agthe, Indian new-age filmmaker Onir and screenwriter Sanjay Chouhan of “I am Kalam” and “Paan Singh Tomar” fame will mentor 18 screenplays for children’s cinema at the Green Screen Lab 2012 being organised in Bhubaneswar, Odisha during August 10-20.
The Lab, organised by Eleeanora Images Pvt Ltd (India) and Performing Arts Lab (UK) in association with Children’s Film Society, India (CFSI), will be hosted by the KIIT University at its campus on the outskirts of Odisha.
Internationally-renowned actor Tannishtha Chatterjee will be the mentor for the actors who will assist the writers attending the Lab. Noted screenwriter Kamlesh Pandey, Cinekid Film Festival (The Netherlands) director Sannette Naeyi and John Newbigin, Chair of Creative England, will attend the Lab as a guest mentors.
Acclaimed author Ruskin Bond, whose works have been adapted to the screen by directors like Shyam Benegal and Vishal Bhardwaj, will attend the Lab as a special guest, and share with the participants his thoughts on the relationship between literature and cinema.
“The call for entry to the Lab elicited a huge response and the selection jury had a tough time picking up the chosen 18 as the quality of the submissions was generally quite high. In fact, this gives us great hope about the future of children’s cinema, which has been a neglected genre in India largely,” says Nila Madhab Panda, whose “I am Kalam” is one of the most-awarded and critically-acclaimed Indian children’s films of recent times.
“Under the Green Screen movement, we are conceptualising production of quality children’s films in various Indian languages wasting minimum energy. For example, these films can be made using maximum amount of natural light, thereby saving on electricity and diesel that is used in generators, or by being shot in natural locations, thereby avoiding studio floors which again involves use of a lot of energy,” says Panda.
The 18 screenplays include five from North-East India as part of the Lab organisers’ idea to bring out the many exciting stories from the neglected region to the mainstream India and beyond.
The selected screenplay writers are (with the name of the projects within bracket):
Adhiraj Singh (Forgot About Mina); Anusha Nandakumar & Sandeep Saket (Mountain by the Roadside), Bassanti Pathak (Pincha My Talking Dog), Bhaskarjyoti Das (The Puppet Theatre),Dominic Megam Sangma (My Mother’s Dream), Gaurav Saxena (Rangzen), Jyoti Nisha (Kahani Chamki Aur Cheeku Ki), Reema Borah (Yeh Jo Hara Hai), Reema Sengupta (Kayko), Romi Meitei (My Home), Shazia Khan (Sabiha), Soumendra Padhi (Time to Run), Sudipto Sen (Amatali), Utpal Borpujari (Ishu) and Vijay Rajan Singh (A Roadside Dream). The three remaining screenplays will be recommended by CFSI shortly.
In the fully-residential Lab, there will be intensive group and one-one-one sessions with Lab mentors and experienced directors, as well as advice on international children’s film production, marketing and distribution from visiting guest mentors from India and Europe. There will also be screenings of and discussions on international-acclaimed children’s films.
Six months further support from mentors, after the residential Lab, will be provided via e-mail and skype, including training for writers and producers to pitch projects to potential producers in India and in Europe.
At least five projects are likely to be chosen for development & production funding with the target to take the films to the floor in 2013. Support may also be provided to selected projects to attend international pitching events like those by Creative England and Cinekid in The Netherlands.
- A Screenwriters Lab focused on developing quality children’s cinema in India.
- 18 screenplays for films to be made in various languages to be mentored by German director Arend Agthe, Indian director Onir and Indian writer Sanjay Chouhan
- Kamlesh Pandey, Sanette Naeyi and John Newbigin to be guest mentors
- Ruskin Bond to participate as a special guest
- Lab to be held during August 10-20
- The screenplays will be developed for films that can be made using the minimum amount of energy, eg., using natural light in place of artificial lighting.
- At least 5 films likely to get funding for production in 2013
For a nation that counts over 35% of its 1.2 billion population as under-15, there is hardly any home-grown quality cinema for children in India, which produces the largest number of films in the world. The country’s children are growing up watching Japanese and American films, animation movies and TV, which reflect little of their own lives, experience or culture.
The Green Screen Lab will invite new and emerging as well as experienced Indian writers to come up with ideas and scripts for films, which are wholly focused on issues and experiences of children in India. The 18 selected writers for the residential lab screenplay development process will work with an expert team of award-winning Indian and international screenwriters, producers, directors and actors.
The aim of the lab is also to help produce cinema that decentralises the organic waste to energy application, focusing on reliability, hygiene and aesthetic values. This process can help producers to create a green ecosystem, towards low carbon production. The dedicated ‘green cinema’ production process largely shuns artificial lighting, sets, usage of diesel etc., thus significantly reducing the carbon footprint and costs of each film.
The Green Screen Lab is a unique movement to address issues we have long been avoiding… To create cinema for our children, to create cinema for a better environment – Eak teer do nishan (one move to achieve two goals),” says Nila Madhab Panda, CEO of Eleeanora Images, who has made the award-winning and much-acclaimed I AM KALAM. “I hope through a process like this we are able to give back something to society specially the new generation, even as we create beautiful new dreams on celluloid.”
After the writer’s lab is over, each writer/team will be provided continuing creative support for another 6 months to develop their projects for pre-production. Selected projects will also be awarded further development funding, which may include, where appropriate, financial support to attend pitching markets at European children’s film festivals such as Cinekid in The Netherlands.
The ultimate aim of the Green Screen Lab is to enable the mentored screenplays to be seen on cinema screens across India. By developing new young writing and directorial talent, this new cinema movement will produce films that are steeped in their regional roots but are also commercially attractive to audiences globally, through the strength of their stories and the artistic integrity of scripts, Performances and production values. Investors in the lab will be making a contribution to social change as well as to the artistic, cultural and commercial development of independent filmmaking talent in India.
The Green Screen Lab is supported by the Children’s Film Society of India, Goethe Institute, Commonwealth Foundation, the Royal Netherlands Embassy, the British Council and private donations.
The Green Screen Lab is hosted by School of Film and Media Services KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, our green partner is Nextgen and our official cinema portal is dear cinema.com