Film Festival with a difference

M. Rekha, a Class II student residing in the government orphanage at Ameerpet, entered Prasads Multiplex for the first time where she watched the 3D animated film Fly Me To The Moon, as part of the International Children’s Film Festival. But for the festival, she would never have been able to see a film in a multiplex.


Sruthi, formerly a street child and now studying in Class VII with the assistance of an NGO, couldn’t contain her excitement.
“I watched the 3D movie with special lens. I thought the fish would eat me up as they came really close to me!” she says delightedly.

And Shivanand, a Class VI student at the government school for the visually impaired, was all ears as he “heard” a film specially audio described for him and his classmates.“I can hear everything in the movie. They narrate all the scenes,” he says.

About 3,500 children living in orphanages and juvenile homes or studying in schools for the visually impaired, the mentally challenged, or from child labour rehabilitation schools got to watch films for the very first time in their lives thanks to a special initiative of the state government and the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI).


“In this film festival, our goal was to get children from underprivileged backgrounds to watch movies in multiplexes. We didn’t want this film fest to be just another event that people soon forgot,” said Mr C. Parthasarathy, MD, AP Film Development Corporation.
To this end, the government conducted contests for children across the state, released brochures and posters a month in advance, conducted a 2-km run and created a buzz about the event.There was a creative dimension to the festival as well. The CFSI held workshops on animation, film-making, scriptwriting, story-telling, reporting and special interactive sessions with kids and directors. For the first time, there was a children’s jury award, a special category and award for Asian films, and special screenings of films made by open forums which brought film-makers, kids and parents onto one platform to discuss the future of children’s movies in India. About 52 child prodigies from across the country were felicitated during the festival. The state government declared that it will take this festival to all regional centres after dubbing the films into Telugu. It also plans to include “filmmaking and cinema studies” in the school curriculum.


The CFSI too has big plans. Its CEO, Mr Sushovan Banerjee, said,“By the next film festival, we want to screen movies made by children themselves under a special category. We will give DVDs of our films to the state governments that are interested in screening them in schools. After this fest, we will have a series of meetings with filmmakers who can help us bring these movies to theatres and make commercially viable movies for children. This children’s film festival was the one with a difference.”