Students' films on strike to be screened at Films Division

PUNE: Three short films made by the students of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), which are based on their perception of the ongoing agitation will be screened at the Films Division in Mumbai on September 4.
This is the 160th edition of the FTII students' films package to be screened as part of the 'fd Zone'.
Apart from students' films, a five-minute documentary on the agitation, 'Strike: Day 70', based on a song, made by documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and Simantini Dhuru, will also be screened.Patwardhan's film juxtaposes the students' protest with visuals of the painted walls and slogans at FTII and a song being performed by the students under the Wisdom tree.
"These films will give people a sneak peek into our agitation. Cinema is our medium and these films will put forth individual perspectives of this strike," said Raju Biswas, a cinematography student at FTII, whose four-minute film, 'Song of the camel driver', gives a glimpse of the artistic hue of the ongoing students' agitation through songs and dances.
The other two films are 'Feel in the Blanks', a 12-minute film by Himanshu Prajapati, which captures the performance by theatre personality Sunil Shanbag and his crew at the acting studio in the campus, and 'Level 0', a six-minute film made by four striking FTII students, which is a narrative monologue on the strike.
"Our films are not giving a detailed description of our agitation as everything has been said. The strike has made us understand a lot of things and each film is a story of how the last 80-odd days have affected us and our creativity. These films, although vastly different in form and content, attempt to address issues of time, transformation and the idea of flux," said Payal Kapadia, a direction student at FTII.
Six other students' films made in the last five years will also be screened. These are: Open Cafe (2011), an 11-minute film by Naveen Padmanabha, Makara (2012), a 19-minute film by Prantik Narayan Basu, Chidiya Udh (2013), a 22-minute film by Pranjal Dua, which won two National Awards, Vijay (2014), a nine-minute film by Arun Kuppuswamy, Water's Childhood (2015), a 22-minute film by Jessica Sadana and Letters from Korlai (2015), a 22-minute film by Aman Wadhan.