Mumbai – The city of celluloid dreams since past century- is the destination of thousands of budding & professional filmmakers in India & world. The city has nurtured many great filmmakers, technicians & entertained the millions worldwide through cinema. People also fondly called it as Bollywood. In the highly competitive age of cinema ‘Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival’ is the platform for short filmmakers to put their work forward among the league of professional.
Among the various categories in the shorts film festival is ‘Best Animation’ and that prize went to a bunch of talented students from DSK International Campus of Pune. The film titled Magarwasi shows the story of Inspector Lobo and his encounter with the malicious ‘Magarwasi’ tribe. On chasing the culprits, he finds himself in a life threatening situation after they lead him to a trap.
The team of students included:-
Varun Nair is a passionate film maker with a drive for storytelling. He follows a very traditional approach to make his films. His first short film ‘Fakir’ had been nominated for 8 International film festivals, and also won the award for the ‘Best Animated film’ at PIFF.
Kartik Gupta is a very passionate CG artist with an extremely strong eye for details. Having a strong passion for making animated films he joined Supinfocom and developed into one of the finest CG Generalist to have ever graduated from his school. He has also won the scholarship from his school, and now he follows his passion for film making with a very reputed animation studio in India. Psych is one of his other films.
Bhanu Khandelwal has learnt five years of Digital filmmaking, and is now specialising in animation. He has a very strong drive for animation which has led him to create wonderful sense of acting in his short films. Having a strong passion for 2D animation, he uses it to his advantage while working on 3D softwares and brings his characters to life in his own unique way. His other film was ‘Blink’ before working on this project.
And finally, Eshana Multani – also a recent graduate from DSK Supinfocom, India – is one of the talented female students to have graduated from her school. Having a strong passion for Japanese anime since childhood, she pursued animation as a career choice hoping to make her own films someday. She now specialises in animation, as she has an incredible sense of movement and she brings a unique charm and cuteness to the characters in her short films. Her first project was ‘Candy’.
MSIFF, a progressive cinema movement started in year 2012 with the consultation of senior industry members to highlight the short cinema. The festival aims to feature great cinema of worldwide filmmakers in a big way and at the same time providing professional networking and introducing current trends of cinema to the participants. The festival also strongly advocates the need of commercial short film industry in India and will raise the issues related to short films in front of various governing bodies of cinema.
The film by the four students has also recently bagged an award at the Pune International Film Festival in the ‘Animated Shorts’ category.