Small Talk

Screen presence
The presence of films made by the students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) has been a regular feature in the International Film Festival of India (IFFI). This year,three student films,When This Man Dies,directed by Arun Sukumar,Swayambhu Sen Foresees his End,directed by Debashish Medhekar and Ekti Kaktaliyo Golpo by Tathagata Singha have been selected for Indian Panorama section of IFFI scheduled at Goa from November 23 to December 3. When This Man Dies is about the monotony of an office worker whose life is disrupted when he receives a letter offering him money when a particular person dies. Swayambhu Sen Foresees his End is a magical,dark journey into the possibilities of fate and the survival of true talent in the business that Indian popular cinema has been reduced to. Ekti Kaktaliyo Golpo revolves around a 13-year-old boy,Babai who is given a magic marble (which apparently has the power to summon the king of fish) by an old man who stays in the ground floor flat of his apartment.

Dramatic efforts
Training in dramatics is one of the topics which they have considered while planning the afore said camp. Swatantra Theatres’s Abhijeet Choudhary and Dhanashree Heblikar conducted half-day Dramatic workshop for visually challenged individuals yesterday at Balkalyan Sanstha,Aundh from 2 pm to 5 30 pm. The workshop was a part of an ongoing camp organised by The National Federation of the Blind,Maharashtra and the All India Confederation of the Blind. Over 30 visually challenged individuals took part in the workshop. The workshop involved training on various aspects of drama such as- introduction to drama,theatrical games,voice projection,story making and improvisation.

Playful act
Motley’s The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,a play directed by veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah will be staged today at the amphitheatre,Ishanya at 8 pm. The play,adapted for the stage by Herman Wouk and Charles Laughton,from the former’s World War II novel is a complex portrait of what war and the accompanying stress does to perfectly normal people. The play deals only with the section of the novel narrating the ordeal of Lt Stephen Maryk when he,having relieved his commanding officer Lt Commander Queeg during a typhoon,is on trial for Mutiny. “I first encountered the film of The Caine Mutiny when I was about 10. It went over my head. It was a war film without any guns going off! No bad guys got blown away,no damsels were in distress,no noble heroes came blasting their way through the undergrowth. Decades later I chanced upon a paperback copy of the play at a roadside bookstall and snapped it up. A single reading convinced me that this was a play I needed to do,” says Shah as he adds,”We have attempted to downplay the American-ness of the play for obvious reasons but without altering the script,so apologies in advance to those in the audience who expect characters with American names to also speak with American accents!” The majority of the cast consists of graduates from the Whistling Woods Film Institute Mumbai,and for almost all,this is their first outing on the professional stage. This is said not in apology but with a certain degree of pride.