Filmmaker Shyam Benegal today inaugurated the IFFK Screen Lab 2015, a mentored workshop in cinema skills and techniques exclusively for Malayalam film technicians.
The three-day workshop, a first-of-its-kind event to mark the upcoming 20th edition of the IFFK, was declared open during a special function here.
Benegal observed that the initiative would provide welcome fillip to local expertise.
It brings together a team of top-notch specialists from film industries in India and around the world to impart skills and techniques crucial to contemporary film production, art direction, production designing, cinematography, script-pitching and make-up, among others.
"With the involvement of internationally recognised filmmakers and film technicians, the IFFK Screen Lab will surely impart more skills and ideas on filmmaking for the participants - adding richness to the Malayalam film industry as a whole," Benegal said.
This was especially important, he added, noting that it was filmmakers from Kerala who closely followed in the footsteps of torchbearers like Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen in daring to challenge the traditional formats, narratives and structures considered dogma to mainstream Indian cinema.
"A cult of new filmmakers, like Adoor Gopalakrishnan and the late great G. Aravindan, starting from the 1970s and well into the '90s started to recognise that they were not bound by the structures or forms that had come to define 'Indian cinema'," said Benegal.
The workshop will be mentored by Pulitzer Prize-nominated dramatist and screenwriter Martin Sherman, Claire Dobbin (chief mentor), chair of the Melbourne International Film Festival, art director Anne Seibel, who was nominated for an Oscar in production design for Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris', noted cinematographer Nigel Walters, film editor Andrew Bird and filmmaker Nathalie David.
Also helming sessions at the workshop are such Indian industry stalwarts as National award-winning cinematographer Anil Mehta, Piyush Shah and Sunny Joseph, renowned make-up artists Nahush Pise, Ramesh Mohanty and Pattanam Rashid and director Vinay Shukla, among others, a release said here.
"It's a line-up that wouldn't have been possible were it not for Shaji N Karun," said Chalachitra Academy chairman and IFFK 2015 festival director T Rajeevnath, said.
Karun, who chairs the festival's Advisory Committee, felicitated Shyam Benegal during the function.
IFFK Screen Lab 2015 will run until December 3, at the Revathy Kalamandir Film Academy in Kazhakootam.
