Till a few days ago, Vijayalakshmi, a second year Dalit student of the Kannada Department in the Karnataka State Women’s University (KSWU), did not have any idea that she would ever hold an expensive camera and shoot a documentary.
For her, the pleasant opportunity came out of the blue and she actually began liking video-shooting and photography. This unexpected but interesting chance has been given to Vijayalakshmi and 60 other girls, most of them from the Scheduled Castes category, by the university’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication which has joined hands with the university’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Cell to provide short-term course to students in videography and photography.
“The Department of Journalism wanted to expand its service to students from other disciplines of the university. The idea was accepted by the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Cell and thus, we decided to offer a 10-day course to students by inviting experts in the field,” said Omkar Kakade, Head of the Department of Journalism. He said that the department thought of training students to help them take up videography as a hobby or a source of earning if they did not find any job in their field.
“To provide them the training, we invited experts such as documentary maker Maya Rao, K.J. Vasuki and M.B. Gouda. During training, the students were taught various skills and methods. On the last day, the students produced their own documentaries,” Mr. Kakade said.
Shashikala, a student of sociology, who too participated in the training, said that the training has given her the confidence to take up videography as a profession. “The video-shooting field is largely dominated by men, but now we feel we can do better than them, especially while preparing documentaries on women issues,” she said.
