Bhopal’s Shirley Abraham to be a judge at Oscars

BHOPAL: Shirley Abraham, of Bhopal, a noted documentary filmmaker will be one of the three Indian panelists at the Oscars this year. Currently residing in Mumbai, she spoke to TOI about the future of documentary filmmaking in India.
"This is a great opportunity for me and I used to dream of being at the Oscars, but it would happen so soon in my career was something I had not imagined.It is a big responsibility as we will have to watch a number of movies and decide which ones are deserving of the award," she said on being a judge at The Academy Awards. Speaking about her journey, Shirley said she wanted to be a journalist but after her post-graduation, she realised that her calling was filmmaking. "I was a very studious child and a topper in school. Watching movies was not something that was encouraged in my family, but I loved watching films so would sneak under the bed ," she laughed as she recalled her childhood in Bhopal and school days in St Joseph Convent School.
After her post-graduation, she chose documentary filmmaking because it was relatively unexplored . "Documentary filmmaking is very exciting as well as difficult because there is an uncertainty as you cannot predict what is happening. The story unravels as you watch and there could be something totally unexpected at the end," she said.
Talking about this genre in India, she said, "Many people tend to think that fiction movies are entertaining while documentaries are mostly educational in nature. This prevents documentaries reaching out to a mass audience like big-banner films ."
Abraham further said that lack of funding for documentaries is another factor that prevents them from reaching a larger audience. "There is a lack of support to documentaries from big production houses as they want to make films that are safe and will go down with the audience at large. Lack of funds is a big factor hindering the growth of documentaries .