Kurt Inderbitzin, CEO of Annapurna International School of Film and Media (AISFM), was in New Delhi recently to address a bunch of aspiring filmmakers and budding actors as part of a workshop conducted to promote film-making facilities provided by Annapurna Studios, Hyderabad. An MBA degree holder from the University of Chicago, Inderbitzin has produced feature films and television movies and series in the U.S. for channels like CBS, ABC and NBC before becoming the President of Abandon Pictures, a diversified entertainment company. He was also the Dean of Whistling Woods International of Mumbai from 2006 to 2008.
Here, Inderbitzin takes questions on how he will try and make a difference in the industry through courses at AISFM: Excerpts:
How will you use your rich and diverse experience to enrich students’ experience at the institute? I want my knowledge and experience in TV and filmmaking to prove beneficial here. It helps me work with the faculty and our world-class Academic Advisors (Mani Ratnam, Kamal Hassan, Hema Malini, Anurag Kashyap, Tabu among others) to design curriculums that really make students fantastic content creators. And that’s what we want to do; we want every student who leaves AISFM to really be a cut above the rest in terms of knowledge and training.
As you know India is the largest producer of the films in the world with over 1,000 movies every year. But 90 per cent of them turn out to be flops. How AISFM can help the industry in reducing this ratio?
We help in turning out students who are technically and artistically strong, this will help in raising the working standards for the whole industry. This translates to better production values and better films. Moreover, we offer an intensive screenwriting programme. We believe that a film begins on the page, and we hope that providing well-trained and talented screenwriters will help to raise the standards of the whole industry. They will understand scriptwriting and acting and directing and having all these skills will enable them to make better movies. Better movies, we believe, results in more successes.
Besides the bachelor and masters degree courses, is there any short course also available at AISFM?
Yes, there are some short term courses available. We also focus on the shorter, part-time courses for people who are working or studying full time and yet have a passion for film and media. We are also looking forward to provide short ‘Movie Magic’ courses in future.
