The students of St Pauls Institute of Communication Education, Bengaluru, participated in the 48th International Film Festival of India 2017 (IFFI’17) held in Goa. This was an opportunity for our students to immerse themselves in a vast movie making culture and interact with eminent personalities from the world of global cinema. They attended seven days IFFI’17 along with three of their teaching fraternity.
The students were able to imbibe some of the international culture and heritage through different movies including Romanian, French, Hebrew, Spanish and Finnish. This was a learning experience for the students who have had exposure to foreign language films. The Other Side of Hope, a multilingual movie by Aki Kaurismaki, was a delightful experience for them as the students were able to interact with Simon Al-Bazoon, one of its cast.
The students could also interact with Oscar winning sound designer Resul Pookutty who imparted technical knowledge about sound design and editing, a rather rare field pursued in India. The students also attended a script writing panel led by the writers of critically acclaimed Hindi movie, Dangal. They were introduced to the methods and nuances of script writing. They also were part of a master class with renowned filmmaker Subhash Ghai who spoke about his iconic films like Khalnayak and Karma, and his over 50 years’ experience in Indian cinema.
As budding aspirants of filmmaking, the students were truly enlightened by their meeting with Karthik Subbaraj, a young filmmaker, and with a stalwart of Malayalam cinema Lal Jose. For the students interested in cinematography and ad filmmaking, their meeting with Omprakash, a cinematographer for over 500 films and ad films was a pleasant experience.
This study trip was thoroughly enjoyed by both students and the faculty, who also took part in fun activities such as parasliding, exploring the city and enjoying local cuisine. For them this was truly an immersive experience of learning outside of the classroom. This has brought the teachers and the students closer to one another thus improving the teacher-student relationship.