“How many of you wants to go to Switzerland?” Conny Camenzind, Deputy Consul General from the Consulate General of Switzerland asks the question of the audience and every one puts up their hands. “I will try and take you there soon,”she smiles.
Camenzind is in Coimbatore to celebrate 70 years of Swiss-Indian Friendship. The Embassy of Switzerland in collaboration with the Consulates General in Mumbai and Bengaluru, has launched a special Friendship Bus that brings two of the best children’s films of 2015 to various regions in India.
The friendship bus travels with a fully-equipped screening gear that includes a projector, screen, sound system, and players and stops at places and screens the films outdoors. This helps to create a feeling of community sharing and oneness. Colourful film posters cover the outside of the bus and cut outs of the main characters from the films are displayed at the venue for children and audience to take photos with.
K. Chandran of Konangal Film Society along with Clusters Media College recently hosted the friendship bus in the city at the campus of Clusters College. “We have launched a series of programmes in arts and culture, science and technology. One of them is film promotion,” explains Camenzind. The films are screened in schools or colleges to reach out to a young audience, besides other venues.
Swiss film poster
The south leg of the event kicked off with a screening in Bengaluru and Mysuru (to a packed crowd of over 300 people) before reaching Coimbatore. The friendship bus travels to over 40 cities all over India and screens the the best of children’s films of 2015 such as Heidi and My Life as a Zucchini.
“Films speak to everyone and it’s a great opportunity to connect with people. Switzerland has a population of eight million while India is 1.2 billion. But still, we have a lot of things in common. We are democracies, we honour family values and culture, and both countries believe in neutrality. It’s a celebration of our commonalities.”
The team at Swiss film screening
She adds how many Bollywood films are shot in Switzerland and says Ranveer Singh is a brand ambassador of Switzerland Tourism. The evening drew to a close with a screening of Heidi . A Swiss family film directed by Alain Gsponer, it is based on the novel by Johanna Spyri. Shot in Switzerland, the film is about a five-year-old orphan who goes to live with her grumpy grandfather in the Swiss mountains.
