Filmmaking workshop held at Goethe Zentrum

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Desi filmmakers who cook up teary tales in the name of ‘children’s films’ could have learned a thing or two at the two-day filmmaking workshop organised by the Goethe Zentrum, the German Cultural Centre, in Thiruvananthapuram. The squeals of laughter could be heard from afar and inside, a bunch of delighted actors-cum-directors were rounding off the act by playing editors, chopping and yoking what they had shot over the two days. Anja Schuetze, the visiting documentary filmmaker, seemed to be enjoying every bit of working over the din, and welcomed all the opinions shouted to her by the debutante auteurs.  The filmmaking workshop, conducted over the weekend, was part of an educational programme organised in connection with the German Year in India. Anja, who fell in love with India while on a short stay for the shoot of a documentary in 2000, was glad to be part of the programme. The theme of the project was ‘City Dreams-Dream Cities’ and Anja chose to give it a visual interpretation through the point of view of children.   Said Anja, “We shot on the premises of the Zentrum on the first day and spent the whole of this morning on the Kovalam beach. We spoke anything we like at the shoot because we are not using the original sound track, so it was all the more fun. Now, we will use a song and turn it into a music video. I was looking for a song which will not involve copyright issues and came across a Bangalore band that let me use their song  ‘Slow Down Cloud’.” A one-to-one dialogue with any of the little filmmakers was an impossible proposition. Maria and Monica tried to give us a more or less clear picture of how they had formed two groups on the first day and did interviews with each other about their ‘Dream City’. And soon, Bharath, Karan, Santra and others were chipping in with bits about the how they made short films in just ten takes and based on a 30-second music track and the whale of a time they had on the beach.  One could deduce that the shooting schedule was fun. Scenes at the beach involved praying with folded hands and being rewarded with a shower of chocolates, a mock fishing in the shallow waters with the actors pretending that chocolates tied to strings were fish. Concepts about the ‘Dream City’ were almost invariably ‘fun-filled, peaceful, and green’. It was inspiring to find that children also thought of ‘plastic-free’ and ‘eco-friendly’ cities, said Anja.  The participants were students of German language at the Zentrum and incorporated Deutsch dialogues in the interviews. The edited film was  screened at the amphitheatre in the Zentrum on Sunday evening to an audience of family and friends.