It's celebration time at FTII

PUNE: It was celebration time at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) here as news of FTII students bagging as many as seven national awards came in on Monday. The recipients of the 55th National awards for 2007 were announced on Monday.
"For this year's National awards, we had sent 19 entries from the 2007 batch. With the passing of films through CBFC made compulsory from last year onwards, our films for last year could not be sent as they needed the mandatory certification," says Chandrashekhar Joshi, film research officer, FTII.
Udedh Bhun,' by film direction alumnus, Siddhartha Sinha, won the award for best short fiction with a Rajat Kamal and cash prize of Rs 50,000. The film is about an adolescent boy and his encounters with different members of his family as well as his attraction towards a soldier's wife.
"FTII has given me enough insight into film-making and is a platform for aspiring film professionals like me to be more confident and creative," says Sinha, who is currently collaborating with a French producer and the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) for his directorial debut that is based on two urban women who live life on the edge.
The award for the best cinematography that comprises Rajat Kamal and a cash prize of Rs 50,000 (each to the cameraman and the laboratory processing the film) has gone to Savita Singh, cinematographer of the diploma film Kramasha', and Adlabs, which processed the film.
Kramasha' is an experimental film based on an ascetic's daily rounds of a village in north India, in the wee hours of morning. It was shot in 2007 in suburban Pune. "Being a student film, the film was a huge challenge as we had to recreate the beauty and nostalgia inherent to a north Indian village in Pune. Location hunting for the film itself took almost a month-and-a-half," says Savita.
She has also shot Ram Gopal Varma's Phoonk,' along with television commercials, music videos and documentaries. Kramasha' has also won best audiography award Rajat Kamal and a cash prize of Rs 50,000, which goes to Ajit Singh Rathore.
" Kramasha' was shot in and around Pune. With very few dialogues, it's a completely sound design-based film. So far, its been the best opportunity for me as a sound designer and sound recordist," says Ajit, who hails from the small tribal village of Jhabua, near Indore in Madhay Pradesh.
He also worked on Amit Dutta's film, Aadmi Ki Aurat Aur Anya Kahaniyaan,' that has been sent to this year's Venice International Film Festival. With a few years in the films industry, Ajit's resume already looks promising. He recorded sound effects for Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Eklavya,' dubbed Deepika Padukone's and Akshay Kumar's dialogues in Chandni Chowk to China,' has designed sound for Nikhil Advani's forthcoming animation film, Delhi Safari,' along with location sound recording for Rahul Dholakia's new film, Lamha.'
The 2007 diploma film Echoes of Silence' has earned the best music direction award consisting of a Rajat Kamal and a cash prize of Rs 50,000, conferred on Zubin Garg.
Nilanjan Datta, a FTII alumnus from the 2004 batch, has won the award for best environment conservation film Rajat Kamal and a cash prize of Rs 50,000 for his documentary film, Bhanga Gara,' made in 2006.
Datta made the film after passing out of the FTII as a student of editing. It was produced by FTII and funded by the United Nations Development Project. The film is based on how the river islands of West Bengal's Malda district are being eroded by the river Ganga.
"I shifted from editing to direction and started off with documentary film-making. I have scripted two feature films and I am looking for producers," says Datta, who has scripted, produced and directed three documentaries so far. He is currently working on a documentary on the Graamin Daak Seva' in Uttarakhand.