FN: Frederick Noronha’s blog

  Visualizing Information for Advocacy:
  An Introduction to Information Design
  By John Emerson
  Tactical Technology Collective
  http://tacticaltech.org
  Printed in India, January 2008
  Creative Commons License
  Downloadable from http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign
 
Reviewed by Frederick Noronha
fred@bytesforall.org
 
You’ve got data. Now what do you do with it? Can you tell an   effective story with the information you have? Can you “move   your audience”?

This is a manual that “offers an introductino to information design”. And it is indended to provide non-government organisations “with a useful and powerful tool for advocacy and research.”

TacticalTech’s Marek Tuszynski, who announced this booklet, said: “Modern life is saturated with ever increasing amounts of information, advertising and media with little time to
digest what is being said. Against this background, NGOs and advocates too often find the information they want to communicate, either buried in long reports full of professional jargon and statistics, or overlooked in an endless stream of media releases.”
 
Next, we go to the link between information design and advocacy, analysis, consumer education and strategy. To make it practical, there’s a “how to begin” chapter, and another how-to on “planning your information design”.
 
Keeping in sync with the tone of the book, the short, visually-rich chapters of the book focus on assessing your data, sorting and sketching, assessing your media, designing your graphics, clarifying your graphics and more.

This publication has been sponsored by Soros’ Open Society Institute Information Program. It leads you thought an explanation of what information design is, how you could use it, and specificially where it fits into advocacy.

But this is a practical book. Using images and comparisons, for example, it explains how spectrum lobbying works.

It points to sites like justvision.org, and the time-line on it, as examples of the good presentation of data (of stories of Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace, in this case). See http://justvision.org/en/timeline

There’s more eye-candy (but of a serious kind!) too. A project of Greenpeace, Exxon Secrets charts funding by the Exxon Foundation to institutions and individual ‘climate change skeptics’ working to undermine solutions to global warming and climate change. The interface makes it easy to visualize and navigate the research. See http://exxonsecrets.org

Some fascinating use of facts, figures and images here. As we’re told: “Information design uses pictures, symbols, colours, and words to communicate ideas, illustrate information or express relationships visually.”

There are practical tips:

“There are many ways to tell a story or to present data. How do you know what kind of presentation to use? The main thing to consider is: how will your information design be used? Is it for planning? Or advocacy? Are you trying to tell a specific story? Or are you trying to create a more neutral map to guide a process of discovery?”

In its 25 pages, there are a whole lot of examples … that really make you think.

Of special interest is a section focussing on how Free Software tools can be used in these tasks. OpenOffice does your office-computing work. NeoOffice works for Mac OS. Ajax13 is a web-based office suite at [http://us.ajax13.com]

InkScape is a vector graphics editor “with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand or CorelDraw”.

PDFCreator will create PDF files from “nearly any Windows application that can print”. Scribus can create layouts for newsletters, stationery, posters, training manuals, technical documentation, business cards and more. The GIMP is an “image manipulation programme”. GIMPShop is a version of this tool modified to be more user-friendly for Photoshop users.

You could write for copies from infodesign@tacticaltech.org But why waste forests when it’s just a download away? Click to get this book for free from http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign

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Tags: visualdesign, ngos, layout

Rut Pinto Viegas Jesus (yellow, right), demos a model of the OLPC at Miramar.

PANJIM, Jan 30: Goa, a small state with some early initiatives at taking computing to students and school, scored another early attempt when the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computer was demoed here at a low-profile event.

The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC) is a non-profit organization, created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, set up to oversee The Children’s Machine project and the construction of the XO-1 “$100 laptop”.

This tiny and unusual computer was demoed at the monthly meeting of ILUG-Goa, the Free Software and Open Source user group that meets at the Goa Science Centre in Miramar, last Saturday (Jan 26, 2008).

The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop or Children’s Machine, is an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in “developing: countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to “explore, experiment and express themselves” (constructionist learning).

The laptops can be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child. Pricing is currently set to start at US$188 and the goal is to reach the $100 mark in 2008.

But such computers are hard to come by here. This is more so as India rejected the initiative, saying “it would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents.”

Ms. Rut Pinto Viegas Jesus, a Copenhagen-based PhD researcher of Goan-Portuguese ancestry, managed to bring down one model of the computer, while visiting Goa on holiday and a family visit to her relations in Santa Cruz and Salcete.

OLPC, which has caused a lot of excitement worldwide, and promises to take computing to children in the less-affluent world, espouses five core principles — child ownership; low ages; saturation; connection; and free and open source.

Incidentally, inspite of its small size and otherwise technological low-rating, Goa has managed to undertake some initiatives in spreading the use of computers, albeit with mixed results.

In the 1990s, expat Goans supported and launched the Goa Computers in Schools Project (GCSP), which despite the odds and a number of hurdles, shipped in a couple of containers of once-used computers, to be refurbished and used in some local schools. Nearly 400+ computers were distributed this way.

After the BJP government came to power in 2000, then chief minister Manohar Parrikar launched the hi-visibility Cyberage scheme, which gave almost-free computers to college students.

So far, the jury is out on the Cyberage scheme, with some questioning its priorities.

Critics focus on the shortcomings of a scheme which gave tens of thousands of computers to students — sometimes more than one in a family — without clear plans for using the same, even while school computer labs and teachers sometimes lacked the facilities.

Meanwhile, the GCSP project was itself scaled down and wound up, due to factors ranging from donor-fatigue and a lack of volunteers, to the growing availability of computer hardware here, which was not as costly as it once was.

Rut, visiting Goa this week, is doing her PhD in Copenhagen, on issues related to the Wikipedia, the surprisingly-successful volunteer-driven online encyclopedia that has built itself into one of the top ten most-visited sites in the world.

Her to visit her grandmum and family in Santa Cruz and “to get some sun”, she said: “I’m also keen to meet other Goans interested in the stuff I am, and will bring my newly arrived XO-1 (OLPC) and that might also be interesting.”

Earlier in January 2008, Free Software and Open Source campaigner Venkatesh ‘Venky’ Hariharan shared his experiences in visiting an the OLPC deployment in Khairat, which is around 55 kilometres outside Mumbai.

This deployment is supported by Reliance, one of the largest industrial groups in India, and is the first in India.

“The deployment is two months old and the parents, children and teachers are very enthusiastic about this project,” reported Venky.

At the meet in Miramar, local techies, educationists and others showed interest in the computer-for-kids, while Rut Jesus explained how the project worked. Her friends have been involved in the project, which she praised as “very self-motivated”.

Some voiced disappointment that India had turned down the project without giving it a good try. Educators decried the policy of keeping students away from playing around with technology and hard-ware.

Others pointed to tools like Gcompris, a free software suite for children between 2 to 10 years of age, and their potential to make learning computing a pleasurable activity.

Some queries focussed on its innovative screen, the ability to use it “as a book”, the XO-1’s ability to ‘mesh network’ with other computers of its kind, and how young techies could get access to the code and specifications needed for them to contribute software back to the project.

ENDS

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A friend in Mozambique wanted her book in Portuguese to come out with a possible English-language translation in Goa. Even while I was thinking of possibilities, last afternoon I ran into my 1983 colleague Alvaro Leao Fernandes (who lives in a pretty home, alongside the Old GMC). We worked together in the Herald in 1983. I was not even out of college, and Alvaro, one of those caught in the ‘Liberation’-time confusion of 1961, was negotiating the tough transition from working in Portuguese to trying to make it in English.

These times meant different things to different people. Opportunity was opening up for us. The last Portuguese-language daily newspaper in Asia (O Heraldo) was shifting over to being an English-language daily. For another generation, the skies were literally falling down on their heads. Portuguese was a shrinking language in Goa. It’s even more so now. They were negotiating the choppy waters of shifting from one European language (though they had grown up with it, almost as if it was their own) to another!

Alvaro was a reflection of that generation. We often run into each other in Panjim. He on his cycle, me preferring to walk occasionally — that’s more personal than my made-by-Bajaj Platina 100 cc two-wheeler, and one gets a chance to meet many more persons anyway. Alvaro did some work awhile with my brother’s firm [http://www.opspl.com] in their attempt to localise Brasilian software into English. We often discuss the news, the world of newspapers, what we enjoyed reading … and sometimes about my old journalist colleague and friend Eduardo (Eddie) Rodrigues.

The purpose of this note is to share with you that Alvaro does Portuguese-to-English translations (and I guess the other way around too, but I didn’t ask). He’s not so much on email, but his mobile is 9270143992. Just thought that sharing the link might help one or even both sides of those looking (and offering). Hope something comes out of this.

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Tags: Portuguese, translations, Goa

I often travel by bus out of Goa. Flying is a necessary evil, at best, avoidable, even if somebody else is picking up the bill (as is often the case while on work). With all this global warming around us, can we justify needless carbon footprints?

So, coming back to the topic of the bus… I wonder how you guys rate the varied bus services that connect Goa.

For long, I used to be a Paulo fan. They’re people-like-us… if you know what I mean. Wink, wink. One of the few enterprising Goan cristaos into business, and doing well with it (despite sometimes being on the wrong side politically, such as their dad Teotonio Pereira supporting the losing Wilfred de Souza Goa Congress bandwaggon when he was a legislator, and their determined high-profile battles over sleeper coaches during the Parrikar regime).

One of the Pereira boys (Magno) was in school with us, and we were all envious that he even had a bus named after him. All the children of the Paulo Travels family at one stage had buses named after them… that was before the fleet outstripped the number of children, I guess
Apart from these factors, I frankly liked their inexpensive operations, and their sleeper service. It allowed me to sleep soundly and reach Bangalore or Bombay next morning fresh, without the hassles of struggling to book a train ticket (which provided the same, for less, but has traditionally been such a struggle to book! Train tickets are now easier to come by, if you have a credit card and can crack the computerised booking system that is.)

But things changed, as the Paulo Travels trips started getting longer and reaching their destination later. If attending an early morning seminar, as is often my situation, one can’t saunter into the venue at noon day, wondering what all one has missed. They offer discounts on their tickets, but is fifty rupees worth the many extra hours wasted on the roads? To be fair to them, Paulo’s breakdowns (and that of other buses) are less frequent than they were a decade-and-half ago when India was still struggling even more badly to get its road transport into place. (India still is, but parts of the country are doing better than others… the south is particularly noteworthy.)

One option was Sharma, a “non Goan” travel service, run far more professionally and efficiently.

If I’m headed to Karnataka, I even occasionally take the KSRTC (Karnataka state service). They have a wide range of buses, including their comfy Volvos. Whatever chauvinism we might have against “non Goans”, fact is they are quietly efficient in running their service. Twenty minutes dinner break means just that — 20 minutes! Not stretchable to 40 minutes, as in the case of our “Goan” bus services. They reach on time, and come packaged in the typically South Indian high politeness levels, which is just the right note on which you want to start a trip somewhere.

Today, while aimlessly leafing through a guide book, I came across an advert for the Raj Travels Goa-Mumbai service (is it really linked to some politicians, as rumoured?) What they offer sounds very interesting, though I must admit that the tickets are priced far higher than the others….

Check out what they’re offering… and please do share your experiences in bus travel to and from Goa. (I’m not pushing for one or the other service, but would really like to know if there are options that we could learn from)…

The uniformed captains bit doesn’t excite me, but the headphones do (the screaming video shows on most other buses are a pain… so I guess that would be absent). And the possibility of using a laptop while travelling also sounds interesting.

Of course, the tickets ARE on the higher side, compared to other services. Send in your views please…

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Tags: bus, goa, transport

FN

PANAJI (Goa), Nov 26: They once fired the Indian imagination, and built dreams for the millions. Today, the posters that built Bollywood are being displaced by technology and the changing needs of the time.

Bollywood’s posters have long been handpainted. But technology is making that a dying-art.

With a backdrop of IFFI, the 38th edition of the International Film Festival of India currently underway here, tributes were paid to this fast vanishing world of poster art.

‘Poster Boys’ is the title of a workshop and exhibition being conducted by poster artists from Mumbai. They promise to show visitors to it “the skills and technique that was used to paint old billboards”.

“We called it Friday-to-Friday art,” says Guruji Vinod, himself a prominent practitioner of this art based in Mumbai’s Dadar locality. Vinod was speaking while taking part in the inauguration of this event in Goa on the weekend. Each Friday, he recalled, old posters were changed for new ones.

He paid tribute to poster-artists, as they went about doing their thick-brushed paint strokes on canvas with what seemed like deceptive ease. “Deepak could paint as many as three posters in a day,” he said, pointing to one veteran who worked and trained under him.

Guruji Vinod joked that the posters, after use, would go into propping up shanti-town houses and roadside homes, and thus played a role in serving the commonman too.

“We painted the town not just red, but blue and pink and violet and all the shades and colours in between,” he said, half jokingly, while noting how the art was fading away.

Bollywood posters have been the most commonly seen ones in India.

“Besides the huge billboards that grace the skyline of Bombay, Madras and other big cities in India, you will find that every inch of public wall space is also taken up with gaudy pictures of Bollywood stars and starlets, making for very colorful city streets,” comments a blog by ‘Lotus Reads’ who identifies herself as a female blogger based in Ontario.

Together with the Bollywood Poster Revival Workshop, Ruchika’s first exhibition, going on simultaneously, is ‘Goan Strokes’ features works by renowned artists from Goa such as Mohan Naik, Rajeshree Thakkar, Nirupa Naik and Rajesh Salgaonkar, whose work has been inspired by cinema.

There’s also another simultaneous one titled ‘Fotographik Fawzan’ exhibition displays the works by phtographer Fawzan Hussain. His photographs showcase behind-the-scenes reality on on Bollywood sets, and runs from November 25 to 30.

What sees in the photos of Fawzan are the scenes that go into making the dream-sequences of Bollywood — starlets being doused with bottles of water to create special effects, major heroes in frank off-screen moments, and scenes which the cinema audiences otherwise won’t even suspect goes into the building of the sequences of the dream-merchants.

Being held at the Ruchika’s Art Gallery, a plush and spacious art gallery, the Bollywood poster revival workshop will be followed by an exhibition of poster works called ‘Poster Boys’ produced at this workshop.

Relatively new, the Ruchika’s Art Gallery boasts of over 10,000 square feet of space, with multiple display areas and artist studios for individual and group shows.

Ruchika’s has also promised educational programs which include knowledge- and skill-based courses, designed and taught by professional artists.

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Tags: iffi2007, goa

FN

PANAJI, Goa, Nov 24: An India fast gaining on technical skills, but still struggling to get the rest of the globe to take note of its regional cinema has chosen Malayalam and Bengali films to represent the country at IFFI-2007 current underway here.

Two regional-language films from the south-west state of Kerala, and the eastern state of West Bengal will be the official entries at the Asian, African and Latin American Competition of the 38th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) that got underway here on Friday.

Lenin Rajendran’s “Night Rain” (Rathri Mazha) is about two youngsters — Harikrishnan and Meera — who come to know each other through a matrimonial advertisement on a website.

Through intermittent chat sessions they get drawn to each other. Though they have not met, love blossoms. But what they love is what each imagines the other person to be.

When they eventually meet, their dreams are shattered. But their minds have been so bonded together that they decide to marry and make the best of it. It is now society that looks askance at their relationship.

Director Lenin Rajendra is an active member of the Communist Party, in a province of India (Kerala) that has intermittently elected the Marxists to rule their region through the ballot box.

Reflecting his politics, his other films have dealt with an anti-feudal upheaval in the Kerala of the 1940s (”Meenamasithile Sooryan”, 1985), a period film about a 19th century king (”Swathi Thirunal”, 1987), an adaptation of a novel (”Vikrithikal”, 1992), on the religious divide growing in the region (”Annyar”, 2003), among others.

India’s other entry is “Tale of a River” (Ek Nadir Galpo), in the Bengali language which is spoken in India as also in parts of neighbouring Bangladesh. It is by Samir Chanda.

“Tale of a River” celebrates the special relationship that fathers and daughters share. Darakeshwar is Anu’s hero and she is her father’s pride and joy. The body between the two transcends time and even death.

Darakeshwar’s mission is to rename a river in memory of his daughter, who is lost in the river.

In a diverse country that has to cope with a Babel of languages, the IFFI manages to draw together quite some amount of regional films. Subtitling these films in English, specially done for the IFFI, helps to widen their appeal beyond the language they were first produced in.

INDIAN PANORAMA: Other Indian films selected include “Ore Kadal” (Malayalam), directed by Shyamaprasad, which will open the Indian Panorama feature film section, while “Bagher Bacha” (Bengali) directed by Bishnu Dev Halder will open the non-feature section of the Indian Panorama section that showcases made-in-India cinema and promises a “360 degree view of Indian cinema”.

These selections were made out of 119 feature and 149 non feature films from across India.

Selecting India’s entries for the event were feature film jury members Ms. Manju Borah, film maker from Guwahati; Leslie Carvalho, film maker from Bangalore; Abhijeet Dasgupta, film maker from Kolkata; Dr. Mrunalinni Patil Dayal, film maker from Mumbai and Ms. Shubhra Gupta, film critic from Delhi.

NON-FEATURE FILMS: The non feature film jury comprised of Delhi filmmaker Pankaj Butalia; Mumbai film-maker Ms. Kavita Chaudhary, and Guwahati film-maker Gautam Saikia.

In this vast land of big numers, some 21 feature films and 15 non-feature films have been selected for the 38th edition of the International Film Festival of India, held annually in November-December and shifted from New Delhi to Goa since 2004.

The non-feature films focus on a range of themes, from the horrors and adventure in the life of a ten-year-old child living in a railway station in Kolkata (”Bagher Bacha”, or “The Tiger’s Club”), to a return to an ancestral village after decades (”Harvilele Indradhansh” or “Teh Lost Rainbow”), and the Egnlish-language 80-minut estory of Indian soldiers still languishing as prisoners of war in Pakistan (”Hope Dies Last In War”).

“Joy Ride” (10 minutes, Hindi) is one of the entries, as is another film on the journey of a great Bollywood film music director of the yesteryears, Dattaram (”Masti Bhara Hai Sama”, Hindi, 80 minutes).

Another film is on famed South Indian writer M.T.Vasudevan Nair (”M.Tyude Kumaranellurile Kulangal” or “MT’s Ponds of Kumaranellor”). “Mubarak Begum” (Hindi, 19 minutes) focuses on the life of the top playback singer of the same name, while another film is a biography of legendary music composer Naushad Ali.

“Ngaihak Lambida” (”Along The Way”) is a film coming from the small North East Indian language of Manipuri.

This film is about a 35-year-old woman, the second-wife of a contractor, whose son gets hospitalised, leading her to get attracted to a stranger — over whom she makes a choice for herself.

“Nokpokliba” (English, 10 minutes) is based on a folk-talk from Nagaland, again from north-eastern India. It is a story about a magician who brings justice to his people through his magic.

Another film on an artiste is “Pandit Ramnarayan — Sarangi Ke Sang”. This biographical film (Hindi, 50 minutes) portrays the evolution of Pandit Ramnarayan as one of the finest musicians. Ramnarayan is to Sarangi (the bow-stringed instrument of South Asia) what Mozart was to piano.

“Poomaram” (”The Flowering Tree”, Malayalam) is about menstruation, males, menstrual rites and the development of agriculture, mathematics, writing, calendars and other realms of knowledge.

“Rajarshee Bhagyachandra of Manipur” (English, 58 minutes) is about a great king of the past, a cultural architect whose artistic creations brought a social-cultural revolution to his people.

“The Dance of The Enchantress” (Malayalam) is about Indian dance, and produced-directed by prominent South Indian film-maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who has scripted and directed ten feature films and more than two dozen shorts and documentaries.

“Whose Land Is It Anyway” (English, 40 minutes) is a film about an ongoing peasant movement in Singur village, to save a thousand acres of their farm-land from beign acquired by the West Bengal government for a car manufacturing factory by an Indian industrial giant, the Tatas.

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Tags: iffi2007, goa

FN

Panaji (Goa), Nov 23: The 38th International Film Festival of India (IFFI-07) takes off later today in India’s smallest state, on the west coast of India. Mainstream Indian Bollywood film actor Shahrukh Khan will be the chief guest, scheduled for Friday evening (India is five-and-half hours behind UTC).

The inaugural lamp — a traditional mark of inaugurations done in India — will be lit with the assistance of Priyamani, a rising star of southern cinema.  Inaugural function will be attended by Indian federal Minister of Information & Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs, P. R. Dasmunsi and Chief Minister of Goa Digambar Kamat besides several important film personalities.

Media commentators, including the NDTV mainstream television channel, commented that this year’s festival was focussing less Indian commercial (”Bollywood”) cinema, and instead looking to regional films and outputs from across the globe.

The Palme D’Or winner of Cannes 2007, ‘Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days’ is to be the opening film.  Director of the opening film Cristian Mungiu and the main actress, Anamaria Marinca are to be present at the inaugural ceremony.

Besides, there would be other foreign delegates representing various international film festivals from Netherlands, China, Poland and Mexico. A major delegation from Poland and China will also be present.  Portugal-Spain film ‘Fados’ directed by Carlos Saura will be the closing film for the Festival.

The Cinema of the World Section will feature a choice of year’s international cinema.  This section will have 76 films from 42 countries.

A specialized competition for feature films by Asian, African and Latin American directors is being organized. Under this section, fourteen films from 13 countries have been selected for the competition. Specially after shifting to Goa, IFFI has been attempting to build itself up as a place for films from Asia-Africa-Latin America.

The competition jury is headed by the eminent award winning film maker from Hungary Ms Marta Mazaros, who has won awards in Cannes, Berlin, Venice and San Sebastian festivals.

Other members of the jury are actress Meltem Cumbul (Turkey); cinematographer Shaji N Karun, film director and script writer from Kerala in South India; noted Argentinian film director Pablo Cesar and Robert Sarkies, film maker from New Zealand.

Hungary will be in focus under the section ‘Country Focus’.

Seven films come from this part of the world: “Black Brush’ (Director: Roland Vranik), ‘Dealer’ (Director: Benedek Fliegauf), ‘Eastern Sugar’ (Director: Ferenc Torok), ‘Hukkle’ (Director: Gyorgy Palfi), ‘Temptations’ (Director: Zoltan Kamondi), ‘The Porcelain Doll’ (Director: Peter Gardos) and ‘Vagabond’ (Director: Gyorgy Szomjas).

In ‘Film India Worldwide’ category, three films ‘AIDS Jaago’ (Mira Nair), ‘Amal’ (Richie Mehta) and ‘The Pool’ (Chris Smith). Retrospective of Ingmar Bergman would feature seven of his highly acclaimed films, namely, ‘Autumn Sonata’, ‘Fanny and Alexander’, ‘The Seventh Seal’, ‘The Virgin Spring’, ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, ‘Shame’, and ‘Wild Strawberries’.

Indian Panorama at IFFI-2007 would present a bouquet of 36 films, comprising 21 features and 15 non-feature films. The package is a mixed bag with prominent Indian stalwarts like Budhadeb Dasgupta and Adoor Gopalakrishnan presenting two films each.

The section would have Ami Iyasin Aar Amaar Madhubala (The Voyeurs- Feature) and Naushad Ali- the Melody continues (Non Feature) by Budhadeb Dasgupta and Naalu Penunungal (Four Women- Feature) and The Dance of the Enchantress (Non Feature) by Adoor Gopalakrishnan.

The debut directors like Sameer Hanchante, Samir Chanda, and Bhavna Talwar would present their films Gafla (Scam), Ek Nadir Galpo (Tale Of A River), and Dharm respectively at the festival.

A special section celebrating 60 years of India’s independence, India @ 60, would showcase seven patriotic films including three feature and four documentaries.

IFFI also features a Film Bazaar for films from India as well as large number of foreign countries, seminars, discussions and press conferences, IFFI Goa film treasures (a section dedicated to international film heritage) and special festival publications on the films being screened, organisers of the event said.

Theatre facilities for IFFI - 2007 have been significantly upgraded. Nine theatres with a total seating capacity of 3026 would be part of the Festival complex as compared to five theatres with a total seating capacity of 2200 last year.

The theatres are, Inox Multiplex (4 screens), Kala Academy (2 screens), Ashok & Samrat (2 screens).  Two new screens have been added in Maquinez Palace, which have the capacity to be looped.  Over 3500 delegates have registered.  Around 350 media persons have registered of which 80 are from Goa, according to the Press Information Bureau, the state-run official information network here.

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Tags: iffi2007, goa

FN

PANAJI (Goa), Nov 26: They once fired the Indian imagination, and built dreams for the millions. Today, the posters that built Bollywood are being displaced by technology and the changing needs of the time.

Bollywood’s posters have long been handpainted. But technology is making that a dying-art.

With a backdrop of IFFI, the 38th edition of the International Film Festival of India currently underway here, tributes were paid to this fast vanishing world of poster art.

‘Poster Boys’ is the title of a workshop and exhibition being conducted by poster artists from Mumbai. They promise to show visitors to it “the skills and technique that was used to paint old billboards”.

“We called it Friday-to-Friday art,” says Guruji Vinod, himself a prominent practitioner of this art based in Mumbai’s Dadar locality. Vinod was speaking while taking part in the inauguration of this event in Goa on the weekend. Each Friday, he recalled, old posters were changed for new ones.

He paid tribute to poster-artists, as they went about doing their thick-brushed paint strokes on canvas with what seemed like deceptive ease. “Deepak could paint as many as three posters in a day,” he said, pointing to one veteran who worked and trained under him.

Guruji Vinod joked that the posters, after use, would go into propping up shanti-town houses and roadside homes, and thus played a role in serving the commonman too.

“We painted the town not just red, but blue and pink and violet and all the shades and colours in between,” he said, half jokingly, while noting how the art was fading away.

Bollywood posters have been the most commonly seen ones in India.

“Besides the huge billboards that grace the skyline of Bombay, Madras and other big cities in India, you will find that every inch of public wall space is also taken up with gaudy pictures of Bollywood stars and starlets, making for very colorful city streets,” comments a blog by ‘Lotus Reads’ who identifies herself as a female blogger based in Ontario.

Together with the Bollywood Poster Revival Workshop, Ruchika’s first exhibition, going on simultaneously, is ‘Goan Strokes’ features works by renowned artists from Goa such as Mohan Naik, Rajeshree Thakkar, Nirupa Naik and Rajesh Salgaonkar, whose work has been inspired by cinema.

There’s also another simultaneous one titled ‘Fotographik Fawzan’ exhibition displays the works by phtographer Fawzan Hussain. His photographs showcase behind-the-scenes reality on on Bollywood sets, and runs from November 25 to 30.

What sees in the photos of Fawzan are the scenes that go into making the dream-sequences of Bollywood — starlets being doused with bottles of water to create special effects, major heroes in frank off-screen moments, and scenes which the cinema audiences otherwise won’t even suspect goes into the building of the sequences of the dream-merchants.

Being held at the Ruchika’s Art Gallery, a plush and spacious art gallery, the Bollywood poster revival workshop will be followed by an exhibition of poster works called ‘Poster Boys’ produced at this workshop.

Relatively new, the Ruchika’s Art Gallery boasts of over 10,000 square feet of space, with multiple display areas and artist studios for individual and group shows.

Ruchika’s has also promised educational programs which include knowledge- and skill-based courses, designed and taught by professional artists.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: iffi2007, goa

FN

PANAJI, Goa, Nov 24: An India fast gaining on technical skills, but still struggling to get the rest of the globe to take note of its regional cinema has chosen Malayalam and Bengali films to represent the country at IFFI-2007 current underway here.

Two regional-language films from the south-west state of Kerala, and the eastern state of West Bengal will be the official entries at the Asian, African and Latin American Competition of the 38th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) that got underway here on Friday.

Lenin Rajendran’s “Night Rain” (Rathri Mazha) is about two youngsters — Harikrishnan and Meera — who come to know each other through a matrimonial advertisement on a website.

Through intermittent chat sessions they get drawn to each other. Though they have not met, love blossoms. But what they love is what each imagines the other person to be.

When they eventually meet, their dreams are shattered. But their minds have been so bonded together that they decide to marry and make the best of it. It is now society that looks askance at their relationship.

Director Lenin Rajendra is an active member of the Communist Party, in a province of India (Kerala) that has intermittently elected the Marxists to rule their region through the ballot box.

Reflecting his politics, his other films have dealt with an anti-feudal upheaval in the Kerala of the 1940s (”Meenamasithile Sooryan”, 1985), a period film about a 19th century king (”Swathi Thirunal”, 1987), an adaptation of a novel (”Vikrithikal”, 1992), on the religious divide growing in the region (”Annyar”, 2003), among others.

India’s other entry is “Tale of a River” (Ek Nadir Galpo), in the Bengali language which is spoken in India as also in parts of neighbouring Bangladesh. It is by Samir Chanda.

“Tale of a River” celebrates the special relationship that fathers and daughters share. Darakeshwar is Anu’s hero and she is her father’s pride and joy. The body between the two transcends time and even death.

Darakeshwar’s mission is to rename a river in memory of his daughter, who is lost in the river.

In a diverse country that has to cope with a Babel of languages, the IFFI manages to draw together quite some amount of regional films. Subtitling these films in English, specially done for the IFFI, helps to widen their appeal beyond the language they were first produced in.

INDIAN PANORAMA: Other Indian films selected include “Ore Kadal” (Malayalam), directed by Shyamaprasad, which will open the Indian Panorama feature film section, while “Bagher Bacha” (Bengali) directed by Bishnu Dev Halder will open the non-feature section of the Indian Panorama section that showcases made-in-India cinema and promises a “360 degree view of Indian cinema”.

These selections were made out of 119 feature and 149 non feature films from across India.

Selecting India’s entries for the event were feature film jury members Ms. Manju Borah, film maker from Guwahati; Leslie Carvalho, film maker from Bangalore; Abhijeet Dasgupta, film maker from Kolkata; Dr. Mrunalinni Patil Dayal, film maker from Mumbai and Ms. Shubhra Gupta, film critic from Delhi.

NON-FEATURE FILMS: The non feature film jury comprised of Delhi filmmaker Pankaj Butalia; Mumbai film-maker Ms. Kavita Chaudhary, and Guwahati film-maker Gautam Saikia.

In this vast land of big numers, some 21 feature films and 15 non-feature films have been selected for the 38th edition of the International Film Festival of India, held annually in November-December and shifted from New Delhi to Goa since 2004.

The non-feature films focus on a range of themes, from the horrors and adventure in the life of a ten-year-old child living in a railway station in Kolkata (”Bagher Bacha”, or “The Tiger’s Club”), to a return to an ancestral village after decades (”Harvilele Indradhansh” or “Teh Lost Rainbow”), and the Egnlish-language 80-minut estory of Indian soldiers still languishing as prisoners of war in Pakistan (”Hope Dies Last In War”).

“Joy Ride” (10 minutes, Hindi) is one of the entries, as is another film on the journey of a great Bollywood film music director of the yesteryears, Dattaram (”Masti Bhara Hai Sama”, Hindi, 80 minutes).

Another film is on famed South Indian writer M.T.Vasudevan Nair (”M.Tyude Kumaranellurile Kulangal” or “MT’s Ponds of Kumaranellor”). “Mubarak Begum” (Hindi, 19 minutes) focuses on the life of the top playback singer of the same name, while another film is a biography of legendary music composer Naushad Ali.

“Ngaihak Lambida” (”Along The Way”) is a film coming from the small North East Indian language of Manipuri.

This film is about a 35-year-old woman, the second-wife of a contractor, whose son gets hospitalised, leading her to get attracted to a stranger — over whom she makes a choice for herself.

“Nokpokliba” (English, 10 minutes) is based on a folk-talk from Nagaland, again from north-eastern India. It is a story about a magician who brings justice to his people through his magic.

Another film on an artiste is “Pandit Ramnarayan — Sarangi Ke Sang”. This biographical film (Hindi, 50 minutes) portrays the evolution of Pandit Ramnarayan as one of the finest musicians. Ramnarayan is to Sarangi (the bow-stringed instrument of South Asia) what Mozart was to piano.

“Poomaram” (”The Flowering Tree”, Malayalam) is about menstruation, males, menstrual rites and the development of agriculture, mathematics, writing, calendars and other realms of knowledge.

“Rajarshee Bhagyachandra of Manipur” (English, 58 minutes) is about a great king of the past, a cultural architect whose artistic creations brought a social-cultural revolution to his people.

“The Dance of The Enchantress” (Malayalam) is about Indian dance, and produced-directed by prominent South Indian film-maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who has scripted and directed ten feature films and more than two dozen shorts and documentaries.

“Whose Land Is It Anyway” (English, 40 minutes) is a film about an ongoing peasant movement in Singur village, to save a thousand acres of their farm-land from beign acquired by the West Bengal government for a car manufacturing factory by an Indian industrial giant, the Tatas.

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Tags: iffi2007, goa

Panaji (Goa), Nov 26: Indian film is bursting forth on screens far and wide, as film-makers take advantage of a more globalised world, a spurt in the visibility of local talent, and the possibilities this throws up.

“The diversity, creative insights and technical virtuosity of Indian cinema are a pageant on world screens in the fall and winter seasons of 2007,” says the latest issue of the ‘FilmIndia Worldwide’.

The magazine has listed a range of Indian films taking part in global festivals during these months.

From the IFFI at Goa, to the Fourth Dubai International Film Festival (Dec 9-16), and the Florence Indian Film Festival ‘River to River’ (Dec 7-17), a range of Indian films are going to discerning audiences at these festivals.

As expected, the 38th International Film Festival of India at Goa (Nov 23-Dec 3) has the maximum of Indian films — 19 feature films; two in the ‘Asian, Africa, Latin America Competition’; 15 in the shorts/docs category; three in the Film India Worldwide segment of expat-crafted films.

Dubai has space for eight Indian films — Mira Nair’s AIDS JaaGO, Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Naalu Pennungal, Santosh Silvan’s Before the Rains, Remo D’Souza’s Lal Paharer Katha, Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s Frozen, Jagmohan Mundhra’s Shoot on Sight, Manish Acharya’s Lions of Punjab Presents, Akbar Khan’s The Taj Mahal, An Eternal Love Story.

Florence takes in Indian films in many categories — feature, documentaries, shorts, animation.

Indian films also make it to the 12th International Film Festival of Kerala (Dec 7 to 14), the 31st Cairo International Film Festival (Nov 27 to Dec 7),

Some of the festivals where Indian work has been recently showcased include the 3rd San Francisco South Asian Film Festival (Nov 16-18), 13th Lyon Asian Film Festival (Nov 6-11), and Third Eye 6th Asian Film Festival (Mumbai, Nov 2-8).

Films from here have also reached Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Kathmandu and other festivals at Sitges (Catalonia, Spain), Pusan (South Korea), New York, Vancouver, Kazan (Tatarstan), and Telluride (Colorado).

Indian film is gaining attention, at least in festivals. The challenge to reach out to wider audiences — beyond just the expat Indian communities — is one which is being continually addressed.

With a wide range of experimental and non-mainstream film being created here, the process is speeding up, thanks to digitisation which allows more small players to enter the field and also makes it easier to distribute films to wider markets or enter them in competitions in festivals worldwide.

‘FilmIndia Worldwide’ editor Uma da Cunha comments: “At year end 2007, Indian cinema has never felt so self-assured, so ready to take on the world, rather like the country’s economy.”

She notes that film festivals are mushrooming in India too — with fests this winter in Kolkata, Kerala, IFFI currently underway in Goa. In 2008, there will be festivals in Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Orissa, and Uttar Pradesh.

“Why not, given this nation of over a billion souls?” asks editor Uma da Cunha in the journal.

‘FilmIndia Worldwide’ is a publication of the Confederation of Indian Industry. CII, an lobby for Indian business, has been promoting entertainment and films too among what it calls “creative industries”.

CII argues that “in the future, the ideas and imaginations of a country will prove to be its greatest asset.” It sees the “creative industries” of India as being an integral part of a knowledge-driven economy “capable of fuelling urban growth.”

CII figures for India say that films, ads, music, digital media and other creative copyrighted products account of $ 15 billion worth of production in this country.

“In virtually every creative field, India has a tradition it can be proud of,” argues the CII, suggesting that the country “can now reap the benefits of being an open society that is ready to integrate into the world and find new and profitable applications for ancient strengths.”

It calls for special steps to understand and manage diversity, and allow India the advantage of being a “multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-religious pluralistic heritage that enables it to understand varied markets with ease.”

CII argues that films, literature, music produced here would appeal to an audience in Western as well as South East Asian nations.

“Thus, a Hindi film can find an audience in the affluent Indian Diaspora in the UK and the US, while Tamil films find a niche audience in Malaysia and Singapore and Bengali films have an eager audience in Bangladesh,” says the industry body.

CII is 112 years old, terms itself India’s “premier business association” and has a membership of over 6500 organisations. It has eight offices overseas and 57 in India, and is headquartered in New Delhi’s Lodhi Road area.

CII’s Creative Industries Division says it is keen to help develop industries producing creative content in the field of media, electronic media, advertising, film, digital entertainment and fashion.

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Tags: iffi2007, goa