A filmmaker based in USA taught the nitty grittiies of film-making to a group of students at Assam Agricultural University in Jorhat recently.
In first of its kind workshop, entitled Cinema Vérité, film director Shankar Borua, a doctorate in Mass Communications from Texas Tech University, USA and his team imparted basic documentary and filmmaking skills to a group of enthusiasts and aspiring documentary makers and filmmakers interested in writing, directing and producing motion pictures and documentaries using low-cost digital technologies.
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Shankar Borua asked the participants to look at the world with a wide-angle lens and craft film narratives that would reflect a sense of social responsibility and empathy for all living creatures big and small on this beautiful planet of ours.
Borua’s dissertation is titled American Political Documentaries: Structure, Agency, and Communication of Meaning.
R P Bhuyan, director of Student s’ Welfare said that this unique training and educational endeavour, the first of its kind at the Assam Agricultural University campus, was highly beneficial to the 25 participants including 19 under-graduate students from the Colleges of Community Science and Agriculture and four technical persons from the Krishi Vigyan Kendras of AAU
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The workshop was conducted by Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat in association with National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP).
Bhuyan said that the undergraduate students of the university were sponsored by P.I., NAHEP (Component 1) as a part of its skill development initiative.
Shankar Borua’s team comprised of operations manager Ratul Das, film editor Jiten Borah and cinematographers Ripu Kashyap and Manas Pratim.
Bhuyan further said that Shankar Borua, also a writer, producer, and actor, generously shared his creative skill set with the participants throughout the grueling 10 day period in an effort to enable the next generation of storytellers to understand the grammar, vocabulary and the language of cinema essential to crafting tales for the screen.
During the workshop, seven movies, five fiction films and two technical documentaries, were produced in record time.
“All the seven Cinema Verite productions were screened to a packed audience of students and faculty of AAU at the Dr M.C. Das Memorial auditorium on the evening of November 29 to a rousing applause, ” Bhuyan said.
Certificates were handed out to the 25 participants for successfully completing the film production workshop.