Thursday, March 25, 2010

Drishti 2010



The Event
The 8th edition of “Drishti”, the annual CG exhibition and Placement Mela organized by Arena Animation – Park Street, Kolkata is being held on 3rd & 4th of April this year followed by a Placement Mela on the 5th.

The objective behind this exhibition is to showcase the design and film making abilities of the students of Arena Animation – Park Street and exhibit the skills that they have acquired for the viewers to judge whether the impact is Holistic or not.

More than 150 students are expected to participate with their works in this exhibition.

Venue & Dates

The venue:
Ashutosh Birth Centenary Hall
(Inside Indian Museum)
27 Jawaharlal Nehru Road,
Kolkata – 700 016

Time:
3rd April 2010, 4-8 pm
4th April, 2010, 2-7pm
5th April, 2010, 11-5 pm (Placement Meal at Campus)

Chief Guest
Drishti 2010 would be graciously inaugurated by the veteran octogenarian Mr. Mahendra Kumar who specializes in Cut-out Animation and has worked with Directors like Ritwick Ghatak as cinematographer. Mahendra Sir has worked extensively with the stories of Lotte Reineger and his story telling abilities can still raise a few goose bumps for the listeners.



Judges for Drishti 2010


The works of the students would be reviewed by the following judges:

Mr. Debasish Deb
Mr. Deb is a famous cartoonist and illustrator from Kolkata. Graduated from Govt. Art College. And has over 15 years experience in this field. Presently attached to ‘The Telegraph’ as a cartoonist and has illustrated many children’s books.

Mr. Ambar Nair
Mr. Nair received his BA in Economics/Finance and Computer Science from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, USA in 1998, and has worked in several industries with leading companies such as Lehman Brothers in New York, Ajilon LLC in Minneapolis and St. Jude Medical in Minneapolis. He has primarily lived in Minneapolis for ten years, working in the consulting industry as well being involved in starting several businesses such as a performance automobile company, a graphic design studio, and a software company, before returning to India in 2004. Though his work experience has primarily been in consulting, he has always had an interest in animation, and worked in the field as a hobbyist up until 2005, when he founded Blowfish FX. Currently he is the CEO of Blowfish Fx.

Ms. Debjani Mukherjee
Ms. Mukherjee is an independent film maker. She is currently working on a graphic novel, a travelogue. She has started out making films as a student in college, even before she joined NID. She is very fond of experimenting with the forms keeping in mind the narrative (or the non-narrative) and its natural flow. She has worked with sand, film strips, water color on glass and other objects and their expression in animation films. There are about 10 short films that she have completed and few of them are Sattala Bari (The Seven Storied House)-Music Video (2009) {It was nominated at The 16th Golden Elephant Awards, International Children’s Film Festival’ 2009 held in Hyderabad, Nominated at Silver Salt Animation Festival’2010} , Chai Break (2008) {1st Place at Digicon Tokyo, Japan 2008, 1st Place at FICCI Frames BAF Awards 2009,Special Jury Mention at Monstra International Film Festival Lisbon, Portugal 2009,Special Jury Mention at Asifa India 2009, Nominated at Kol.katha 2009}, Tuccho Music Video (2009) etc.

The New Dimension of Drishti 2010

Every year we add a new dimension to this event. In the eighth year, we plan to hold the Placement Mela at Campus on a larger scale where the works of our students will not only be showcased to the people from the industry but also create an opportunity for them to select the right candidates of their choice, based on the quality of work on display. Some of the companies will also conduct an aptitude or technical test for the benefit of the students.

In addition the format of Drishti has been sufficiently tweaked keeping in mind the shift in focus of our students from “software” to animation film making.

Placement Mela:

The placement mela is scheduled on 5th April 2010 and about 6-7 local companies are expected to recruit. Some of the prominent ones among them being:
1. Festoon Media (Web Designing & Multimedia)
2. Animatzione (2D Animation)
3. Club D7 Holidays (Web Designeing)
4. Ani2Pix (3D Animation)
5. Elecom Toons (3D Animation)
6. Blowfish F/X (3D Animation)
7. Tara TV (Graphic Designing & 3D Animation)

More than 75 students have so far enrolled for the Placement Mela and are preparing hard to get that coveted job in the company of their dreams.

Categories

Drishti 2010 will showcase art work of some new categories including

a. Single frame cartoons (Repeat from last year)
b. Visual Story Telling (Repeat from last year)
c. 3D Scenes (New)
d. Students Film (Repeat from last year)
e. Faculty Film (Repeat from last year)

Other Attractions

In addition to the exhibition, the event will be peppered with a lot of activities to keep the atmosphere buzzing and electrified. Some of these activities include a Jam session, face painting and many on the spot competitions including writing captions/dialogues for a set of cartoons.

Mr. Ramesh Ruia, Director of Arena Animation – Park Street said that he was extremely excited about Drishti, since now the students film from Arena Park Street have started getting recognized and nominated in major film competitions. The overall quality of the student’s works has undergone dramatic improvements over the years which is evident from the fact that Arena Park Street ended up winning 9 out of 10 awards in the inter Arena student works competition held recently. These awards were won across all the categories indicating a Holistic improvement in the works of the students. “I hope the hard work of the students get translated into jobs for some of them during the Placement Mela where some of the prime animation companies of Kolkata are recruiting."