CFSI’s Globally Acclaimed Little Directors Programme Goes Rural

Children’s Film Society, India’s ‘Little Directors’ programme, which was initially started in International Children’s Film Festival in 2013 has now gone rural in the country, where workshops are being planned for the rural children from the age groups of 7-16 enabling them to make their own films.

To begin with CFSI would hold Little Directors programme in the Rural areas of Bihar and Rajasthan, slowly entering other states including Maharashtra.

In the pilot programme,which concluded last week, CFSI, in partnership with World Bank-DIME and Asian Centre for Entertainment Education (ACEE)conducted workshops under ‘Little Directors’ programme for the rural and underprivileged children in Bihar.

The next leg of this programme would cover rural areas cities like Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur and others from Rajasthan in the month of December. This will be followed in rural areas of Maharashtra too.

Dr. Shravan Kumar, CEO, Children’s Film Society, India said, “Our concept ‘Little Directors’ has been one of the most unique experiments anywhere in the world being conducted in a professional environment through trained experts. Since we launched this concept in the 18^th International Film Festival in 2013, it has become a star attraction in our Festivals, and we now received 100s of entries from dozens of countries every year for ‘Little Directors’. We are extremely happy that this programme was supported by World Bank and they will be undertaking an impact evaluation study based on this programme.”

As a part of this programme, children will make a 3 to 5 minutes short film on the issues concerning Water & Sanitation and Gender, specifically related to Swachh Bharat Mission. Children will only produce, create, act and develop these films after leaning these nuances from the workshops. As a part of training the creators CFSI films like Pinti Ka Sabun (a film on hygiene), Bandu Boxer (a film on rural development) and Pani Re Pani (a film on water sanitation)were shown to children audience.

Introduction and discussion on eight important issues related to water and sanitation and gender with respect to Bihar was undertaken with children. Besides this, the children were also provided a training on storyboarding, budgeting, shooting and editing (post production) etc. during the workshop.

“Our biennial event 20^th International Children’s Film Festival 2017, which is scheduled to be held Hyderabad from 8^th to 14^th of November will be showcasing these films to the International audience. Moreover, the children ages 13 to 18 have made films on khadi, local weave & fabric and on the rapidly growing textiles mission in Bihar, where they have spoken about how they see careers as entrepreneurs in the industry of fashion today.” said Dr. Shravan Kumar, CEO, CFSI.

“During the 19th ICFFI, we had received 187 entries from eight countries in the Little Directors Section as against 123 entries during the 18th ICFFI. This time, we have received 179 entries so far, out of which 101 are from India and the remaining from over 30 countries. This clearly indicates that the festival has gained popularity world over,” added Dr. Kumar.

CFSI is a nodal organisation of the Government of India that produces children's films and TV programmes in various Indian languages. Established in 1955, CFSI comes under the aegis of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in the Union Government and is headquartered in Mumbai.

With an enviable catalogue of 260 plus films in 15 different languages, CFSI remains the prime producer of Children's films in South Asia.

CFSI also organises films screening across the country, reaching out to approximately four million children annually. Its marketing division, based in Mumbai, with two branch offices in Chennai and Delhi, is engaged in the promotion of children's films through free exhibitions as well as through sales.