Makaut to come up with first state-run film school

KOLKATA: Those, who are aspiring to make a career in films, have a reason to rejoice. The state will have its first

film school

that will help aspirants do their graduation and post-graduation in

films

and earn a degree.


State higher education department had been planning the school for long. Earlier this year, it had asked the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology (Makaut), the state-run tech university, which controls over 200 tech colleges in the state, to start the film school. Finally, the wait is over and the school, to be run by Makaut, will open its doors to students in August.

Makaut

has entered into a partnership with one of its affiliated colleges, Ilead, to set up the film school.

A full-fledged set-up is being prepared to house different branches of the course that will lead to BSc and MSc degrees. The only other film school in the city, the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), is run by the Union ministry of information and broadcasting.

Makaut and Ilead have roped in Mumbai-based Bombay Bioscope, which has been promoting Indian content to the global online film market and has also forayed into buying Bengali content for OTT platforms. Bibhas Mukherjee, chief of Bombay Bioscope and an ad-film maker based in Mumbai, has crafted the syllabus and is presently having talks with directors and technicians in Bollywood, mostly Bengalis, who would get associated with the school as faculty. Anirban Lahiri, senior faculty member of the Ramesh Sippy Film Institute in Mumbai and an ace cinematographer and script visualiser, has been roped in from Mumbai as a faculty member.

Others who have agreed to join are, sound engineer Anup Dev, known for his work in films like ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, ‘Taal’, ‘Sarfarosh’, ‘Ghajini’ and ‘Taare Zameen Par’, Swapan Roy, a creative director in advertising in Mumbai, Shanti Bhushan Roy, director of photography who has been associated with Satyamev Jayate and Rubaru Roshni, produced by Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao. The undergraduate students can pursue their honours in cinematography, sound direction, production design, script writing and VFX.

“Apart from some big names from Mumbai, experienced hands from Tollywood will also join us. We are not revealing all the names yet. It has been a massive project, taking into consideration the fact that film studies and film making is the next big emergent area in academics,” said Saikat Maitra, the vice chancellor of Makaut.