India on Air

The theme of the 15 proposed films at the Goa workshop, selected out of more than 100 entries, is called Changing India. Once the 15 proposals are whittled to five by a jury of three from STEPS International, the films will be picked up by at least one of the broadcast stations that was present in Goa, insuring financing and broadcasting of the films around the world. Broadcasting will begin in August 2007, on the 60th anniversary of India8217;s independence.

The topics varied from the simple to the complex. Anjali Monteiro and Jaya Sankar, both professors at the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, proposed a sequel to their earlier film YCP 1997, in which they documented the lives of six prisoners at the Yerawada Central Prison in Pune. Five were poets, one a tabla player, and the film explored how the prisoners looked at the outside world from behind bars.

Monteiro and Sankar want to make the update Larger Prison now that those prisoners are all free. 8216;8216;When someone gets out of prison, they come into a larger prison, unaccepted by family and friends. And India still has no system to help them rehabilitate,8217;8217; says Monteiro.

Anirban Datta from Kolkata has proposed a film on the information highway in India8212;how there are two opposing forces in the rural and urban spaces that render the 8216;8216;democracy of upgradation8217;8217; a privileged prospect.

Mumbai-based film-maker Paromita Vohra8217;s The Gate seeks to look at who goes in and out of one gate in an upscale neighbourhood in New Delhi. Noting how people in Delhi are now 8216;8216;obsessed with gates8217;8217; and that security guards serve not to protect but to actually weed out the undesirable, the Delhi native said, 8216;8216;This is a big shift from the way things were before. The gate is a symbol of access and mobility. I8217;ll use it to understand space and separation and how Delhi has changed.8217;8217;

STEPS India8217;s brief for the film-makers: 8216;8216;challenging, risky, provocative, fresh stories, taking place in front of the camera, taking place now, not in the past.8217;8217; In other words, how has India really changed in the last 60 years, and what has it become?

But the stories had to have an international impact as well. Iikka Vehkalahti, a commissioning editor from the Finnish broadcast company YLE, said the diversity came out in all 15 entries8212;8216;8216;It8217;s amazing how many have international potential and how the stories could resonate everywhere, not just in India.8217;8217;