ITV

Category: Documentary

  • PVR Nest and Ryan International School initiate films to sensitise students on road safety

    PVR Nest and Ryan International School initiate films to sensitise students on road safety

    NEW DELHI: PVR Limited through its social programme and registered foundation PVR Nest and Ryan International School has created a film based road safety education programme at its Cinema at Sahara Mall, Gurgaon.

     

    For the first time, a social foundation and a school have come together on a same platform combining their synergies to create a very unique entertaining educational session on the very important issue of Road Safety for children who are the “Future road users”.

     

    Usually, the best behaviour practices while on road are forgotten. And thus, the issue was communicated to the children in the most innovative and entertaining manner using films as a medium. It is an effort to bring about behaviour change among children towards road safety to reduce the rate of accidents and make it a social movement.

     

    More than 250 children from Ryan International School participated in the program and took the pledge to carry the initiative forward by forming Road safety clubs in school and making their own original films on the issue. The program was given an opening with CineArt educational workshop which was followed by a Film making session by Mr. Nitin Das (an eminent filmmaker who has been awarded by British council for entrepreneurship in the social sector) and an entertaining film.

     

    On the occasion, PVR Vice President – CSR Deepa Menon said, “At PVR Nest, we are continuously looking at addressing core social issues that affect the community we live in and thus uphold our commitment towards urban sustainability. We are extremely happy to use our spaces and partner with Ryan International School to create education and action on this very important issue of children’s and family health& nutrition using the innovative mediums of films”.

     

    Ryan International School School, Sector 40 Gurgaon School Head Peeya Sharma, said “We at Ryan International School aim to provide a holistic education. I strongly believe that education moulds and chisels each student into a multi-faceted personality. We recognize the importance of contributing to society in a meaningful way through the hands of children. Through ‘Films for Change’ initiative we aim to inculcate the leadership and responsibility among our students. We are happy that we are able to reach out to our students through films which are the most powerful medium of engagement.”

  • Indian documentary breaks record for longest run in Indian cinemas

    Indian documentary breaks record for longest run in Indian cinemas

    MUMBAI: Sundance Grand Jury Prize-nominated Indian film Fire in the Blood has been held over for a fourth week at PVR Phoenix in Mumbai, thus becoming the first-ever non-fiction film to achieve a four-week commercial theatrical run in India.

     

    “This is a dream come true and a real testament to the fact that audiences in India are hungering for new and different types of films,” said producer-director Dylan Mohan Gray. “The word of mouth has been just incredible, and definitely the key factor in sustaining interest in Fire in the Blood,” he added. “I get e-mails, especially from students, every single day telling me how blown away they were by the movie and how they’ve prodded their friends to rush to go see it while it’s still running.”

     

    Fire in the Blood tells the story of a unique and eclectic group of people who came together from India and other parts of the world to stop the ‘Crime of the Century’, whereby low-cost AIDS medicine was being deliberately withheld by Western pharmaceutical companies and governments from reaching Africa and other parts of the developing world, resulting in a minimum of ten million needless deaths. The film has won three major international awards, including the Prize for Political Film in Hamburg in early October, and has been consistently listed as an outside Oscar contender in the documentary feature category by The Hollywood Reporter and other US industry sources.

     

    PVR Joint Managing Director Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, said “We feel a huge amount of satisfaction in seeing our film Fire in the Blood break the record for most consecutive weeks in theatrical release by a documentary in India. PVR Director’s Rare has been the standard-bearer for bringing world-class non-fiction and art house films to Indian audiences, and it is a source of immense pride for us to see audiences responding so strongly and keeping a film like this in the cinemas, fuelled by strong word of mouth and outstanding critical acclaim.”

    Fire in the Blood is narrated by Oscar-winning actor William Hurt.

  • Salma to screen at Documentary Edge Film Fest in Auckland

    Salma to screen at Documentary Edge Film Fest in Auckland

    MUMBAI: Kim Longinotto’s film Salma is one of the first five names announced for screening at the Documentary Edge Film Festival 2013, an international documentary film festival in Auckland, New Zealand.

     

    The film is the story of thirteen year old Salma, a Muslim girl in a South-Indian village who is locked up by her family for 25 years. She is not allowed to study and forced into a marriage. She covertly takes up composing poems on scraps of paper. Eventually she escapes and lands up in the hands of a publisher. Salma becomes a celebrated Tamil poet, discovering her own freedom and challenging the traditions and code of conduct in her village.

     

    Other films that would also screen at the festival are – Unraveled (USA) by Marc H Simon, How to Survive a Plague (USA) by David France, The Russian Winter (USA) by Petter Ringbom and Her Master’s Voice (UK/USA) by Nina Conti.

     

    The festival will be held from 10 to 21 April while another edition of the festival will run in Wellington from 8 to 19 May.

     

     

     

  • Javed Jafferi takes to documentary making

    Javed Jafferi takes to documentary making

    MUMBAI: With the formation of his new company Indian Documentary Foundation, noted comedian Javed Jaaferi has taken a plunge into documentary making.
     

    “Indian Documentary Foundation is a non-profit organisation that will help raise funds for financing and marketing documentary films, create awareness and raise the bar for Indian documentaries,” Javed said.
     

    Earlier, he was the co-producer of Inshallah, Football, a documentary on the game of soccer. Now, Jaaferi hopes to create a market for such movies that act as an eye-opener and share hard-hitting information.

    “Documentaries act as an eye-opener and say a lot about society, whether it`s Malegaon Ka Superhero or Final Solution. These films provide some amazing and hard-hitting information in a condensed form. There are so many different areas that they touch upon, which people are not actually aware of,” he observed.
     

    The 48-year-old Jaaferi blames the ‘escapist’ attitude of people for the dwindling state of documentary filmmaking.
     

    Jafferi, son of veteran comedian Jagdeep, has been the mainstay of films like Double Dhamaal, Hello Darling, Lafangey Parindey, 3 Idiots, Daddy Cool: Join the Fun and Kambakkht Ishq, among others.

  • Amol Palekar makes first documentary on Kishori Amonkar

    Amol Palekar makes first documentary on Kishori Amonkar

    MUMBAI: The first-ever documentary on music stalwart Kishori Amonkar has been made by Amol Palekar and his wife Sandhya Gokhale.
     

    The 72-minute long film Bhinna Shadja will be screened in Pune at the National Film Archive of India on 30 August.
     

    Talking of how the idea was conceived, Palekar recalls, “Once, she was chatting with me after a concert and the topic of documentaries on different maestros came up. I asked her why there wasn’t even one on her and she said, ‘You are the kind of person who should make it.’ I was taken aback by her response but did not say anything at that moment.”

    After a lot of thought, they decided to only focus on her art, her contribution to music and her thought process without going into the nitty gitties. “We were not sure whether she would agree to this or not. However, when we met her, she gave us complete freedom of interpretation. That was a great relief for us considering that in the past, many people including Vijaya Mehta and Nana Patekar did approach her for making a documentary but that didn’t work out,” averred Palekar.

     

    The duo took more than six weeks to respond, which upset Amonkar. But they used that period for homework, looking at more than 40 films and documentaries on various legends from art and culture. “This gave us an idea as to what we shouldn’t be doing,” recollects Gokhale.

     

    Shot in Goa, Mumbai and Pune, the film features music stalwarts such as Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, all recalling their association with Amonkar and her music.