|
COW is back!!!
Well it is still not easy to believe that some of the loonies pulled
off a fantastic festival of storytelling named Chitrakatha way back in
October 25, 26 & 27 in the year 2007, where we all celebrated and took
oath to protect and promote everything original (the agenda of the
first edition). The effort was to let the truth speak in Indian
animation, where often we all get seduced by the glossy form, machine
or the boring business data and assembly line homogenous productions
and what not!!!
Way back in 2003 during the summer semester our alumni Prakash
Moorthy came to take a course on Character Design for our
animation students. During tea-breaks we used to talk about many
things of life including the whole melancholic feeling regarding the
current state and trend of Indian animation. Suddenly both of us
thought aloud - why not a festival from NID???!!!
My knees went weak for a moment as we were dreaming of a festival
which will be at par with festivals like Hiroshima, Zagreb and few
more which grew over the years and became a unique platform for
alternatives and unsung who keep on churning out new talents, who
debate the trend and also keep the hope alive.
Moorthy took the charge of writing the first manifesto of the proposed
festival where the main agenda was “everything original” and
main spirit was “for the student and by the student”.
It took almost two years to do the warm up and before the actual work
of the festival started. Few more enthusiasts gave us push and hope
for the festival. We originally thought of naming it ‘Manifesto’07 and
after many brainstorming sessions we zeroed down on the word ‘Chitrakatha’
which can be identify as a subcontinent affair.
In 2005 when our good friend Isabel Herguera, Festival director
of Animac, Spain came to conduct our first ever experimental animation
workshop, she was thrilled with the idea of the festival and we
immediately got into the motion with her rich experience in designing
a world class animation festival of artistic expression.
Soon we smelled the positive spirit of the festival, immediately came
the picture of a jolly cow as a mascot in my mind as Ahmedabad is a
city of cows and I cracked the word COW as the ‘Cinema Of Wonders’
another synonym for animation. We announced the festival in 2006 end.
Few more friends within NID and from Cartoon Network, Channel V,
Autodesk, AnimationXpress.com and our lovely bunch of students,
all came together to make the Chitrakatha’07 a reality and planned it
as one of the unique October events, we may say like the spirit of
historical October revolution or Oktoberfest!!!
We felt Chitrakatha should be there only every alternative year as it
would then give us enough breathing space to plan and also get enough
stock of new work from many more students across the globe to keep the
festival spirit alive.
Chitrakatha this year is scheduled from October 29th to 31st,
immediately after October 28, International Animation Day, where we
pay tribute to great Emil Reynoud. The agenda of this years festival
is going to be ‘Celebrating our City, Exploring our Stories’ where the
keynote talk will be about the heritage of Ahmedabad, so that we can
interlink the city of Ahmedabad and Chitrakatatha as a festival too.
We have begun inviting like minded public-private collaboration to
strengthen the spirit of Chitrakatha, a unique interactive platform
formed in 2007, for every students, teachers, alumni, industry and
creative individuals to come together and continue with!!!
Storytellers of the world...Unite!!!
|
