Other side of the lens

HYDERABAD: Movie fever at the International Children’s Film Festival has been spreading like never before. With directors, actors and technicians coming from all around the globe, it has just gotten better. Be it the Indian entries or the international competitions, every segment of the movie is being judged upon by the younger lot. And, yet another surprise element of this year’s festival is the Little Director’s segment.To our surprise, kids have been sweating it out in the competition as well.From loads of entries coming from school children, the competition has surely taken a more interesting flavour. One such movie jointly directed by three little directors Ajinkya Hukerikar, Aastha Jain and Maitri Dave is Tellu.The movie is about a boy who applies a lot of oil on his head and how he gets bullied by the other boys at his school. Produced by the school, Ajinkya’s crew members are class 6 and 8 students who stand behind him and proudly say, “We are from the technical team”.The sole reason for such awareness among the children is because of the fact that the school has media studies as an extra-curricular activity. Children are taught camera handling, shooting and editing as a part of this course.The head of the department of the course, Atiya Choudhary says, “Considering the amount of interest these children have shown, we have started this course.They direct movies, cast people, make costumes and also edit it themselves.I think we are more than happy to encourage their talent.” She further adds, “Apart from Tellu, we had sent about three entries from our school.One was titled, “A Sigh of Relief” by Yash Patel and “Mending Ways” by Natasha Kothari. However, Tellu got shortlisted.” Expressing his happiness over the selection was director, Ajinkya. He says, “I am really happy that my movie has been selected for the festival and with such great critiques, I guess it only gets better.’ Adding a little about the movie he says, “My movie Tellu is about a boy who applies excess teel and how friendships get affected in the process.I chose this subject because this happens at all schools and somehow people try to change themselves to get over such issues.” Explaining about the movie sequences and shooting technicalities, Ajinkya, a class 10 student says, “We shot the movie over a period of one-and-a-half week and after that editing and other technical stuff took about four to five days.I initially wrote the background script, after which Aastha and Maitri joined in and pooled in all their inputs, which made it even better. Their contribution has been very helpful.” He further adds, “Right from shooting to editing the final cut, we compiled everything at the school premises.Even the cast are students from our schools who were selected as per the demand of the script.” Mentioning about the technical team, he says, “We distributed all the work right at the beginning which made the work much easier and my team worked so hard and everybody did their best for it.” Agreeing with him was Shrishti Duggar, another class 7 student from the technical team. “We really liked the script when Ajinkya read it out to us. We all thought we should work on it and send in as our entry for the festival.”