Update

SHOBDO KOLPO BHROM
A movie festival for youngsters to view and discuss films from all over the world
In the last week of August, Kolkata experienced a unique event for youngsters. Titled Shobdo Kolpo Bhrom, it was a movie festival for youngsters to view and discuss films from all over the world. The screening took place at two venues. Organized school groups came to the auditorium at the Birla Industrial & Technological Museum for two shows every day – 10am to 12 noon and 1pm to 3pm. All the six shows, spread over three days ran to full houses. The evening shows at Nandan III were open to all, where children could come with their parents. Unfortunately, very few children turned up for the evening shows. The seats were filled by adults – film students, film makers, film scholars and lovers of good cinema. Most of them stayed back for an animated discussion after the screenings.

The purpose of organizing this festival was two fold – one, to offer to the young viewers a diversity of stories, a diversity of characters and their concerns and diverse ways of telling stories - and secondly, to explore the pedagogical value of movies. Movies and television, that capture a large part of the child’s time and imagination, rarely become part of the classroom discourse. Yet, a lot of topics can be easily introduced through movies and a lot of imaginative exercises can be devised based on the movies screened in the class. Even if screening facilities are not there in the classroom, reference to popular movies and television programmes by the teacher will not only pep up the classroom discussion, but also help her question the ideology behind these popular programmes. This would in turn make the youngsters view the mainstream media critically.

At the inauguration of Shobdo Kolpo Bhrom, the chief guest Sabyasachi Chakrabarty said that in spite of being usurped by the capitalists in promoting a consumer culture, television was a great teacher. He himself had developed his love for wildlife and values of ecological conservation through the programmes viewed in Discovery and National Geographic. Chakrabarty also lamented the fact that in a country where generations of children have grown up on Thakurmar Jhuli, the present generation has got hooked on to Harry Potter.

The films selected for the festival were an eclectic mix of short fiction, short docu features, animation films and even one hour long documentaries on serious subjects. They were films from all over the world – Mongolia, China, Brazil, Europe, USA and of course, India. All the films had children as central characters, but all the films were not necessarily made primarily for children – and practically, none had a moral in the end. In other words, the films were not conventional morality tales – as children’s films are expected to be. The films were grouped under themes like “Ambition”. “Friendship”, “War & Peace”, “Triumph of Will”, “Children Express” and “We’re Like That Only”.

What added a unique flavour to the festival were the introductions to all the films and the interactions at the end of every screening. Somebody who loved and understood the medium well, introduced the films to tune the viewers to the visual syntax of the film. This was necessary because the young viewers are exposed to stereotyped audio visual styles in the mainstream media – be it cinema or television. At this festival, every film was different – different in what it had to say and how it was said. The introductions gave the viewers an idea of what to expect. The interactions following the screenings helped the adult facilitators in understanding the cognition process of the children – what they noticed, how much they noticed, what they liked best and what remained with them. For example, after the screening of the delightful short animation film “Shaun the Sheep”, where a gibberish art work done by the sheep gets sold at high price, one child remarked philosophically that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. This simple film, which had a flock of sheep, an artist and his pet dog as the characters, any teacher could have taught the fundamentals of commune, collective labour, communism and capitalism. A teacher could also have initiated a discussion on good art, bad art and the landmarks in art history through this film. Of course, in a classroom situation, the teacher would have shown the film more than once to initiate the discussion on the different subjects.

The young viewers who attended the screenings came from different backgrounds. One may perhaps mention here the first screening on the 26th of August at BITM. Children came from Loreto School, Oral School for the Deaf Children and Manovikas Kendra – a school for the mentally challenged. The day’s theme was Friendship. The films were all a part of the Prix Jeneusse Suitcase. The moderator was SV Raman. It was heartening to see the differently abled children enjoying the films thoroughly and participating animatedly in the discussion. The children from OSDC could not verbally communicate their comments, but they wrote down their comments on a piece of paper and passed on to the moderator.

The interactions at the festival also helped the facilitators to discuss in depth and debate about the issues raised in the films. After the screening of a Chinese film called “Please Vote For Me”, on the election of class monitor in class II at a Chinese primary school, one student was cynical enough to remark that bribing during campaigning was an accepted thing. This film was an excellent tool for introducing ideas of democracy. In this film, two boys and one girl were nominated to fight for the post of the class monitor and they were given 15 days to campaign. The two boys turned out to be bullies, but the girl was more straightforward and innocent, given to buckling under pressure. She lost the election, but all the girls in the audience unanimously aid that they would have voted for her. Asked whether ambition was a virtue or vice, one student remarked that ambition was a virtue, but it left you sad and depressed if you did not get what you had set your heart for.

These wise quips by the young viewers made Shobdo Kolpo Bhrom a memorable experience. Altogether 28 films were screened in three days. Ten schools had sent their children to the screenings. In the nine shows put together, more than 1000 children and adults viewed the films.

Shobdo Kolpo Bhrom was an activity of Harekarakamba, an education festival to celebrate diverse approaches to learning. Harekarakamba will be held at the Birla Industrial & Technological Museum, Kolkata from December 3 to 6, 2009.
- Subha Das Mollick