It is essential that college students understand what good cinema is, and that commercial films show stereotypes as entertainment, film director and theatre personality Sadananda Suvarna said here on Saturday.
Competition
Speaking at the valedictory function of Shooting Stars, a short film-making competition organised by St. Aloysius College, Mr. Suvarna said that short films afforded the opportunity to explore one's creativity and experiment with the medium of cinema.
He said that it was important to understand that commercial films used stereotypes as entertainment. Commercial films had several ingredients to attract the masses such as item songs, fighting scenes and sex. Makers of commercial films had to recover the huge sums of money invested in making the film. Short films on the other hand gave one the liberty to create something that one did not see in commercial cinema, Mr. Suvarna said.
They required creativity, he added. Referring to The Flying Bird , Mr. Suvarna said that it conveyed all it wanted to say without using a single dialogue. Even without using dialogues, the film was able to convey “many meanings”.
Vice-principal of the college Veronica Judith Pinto said that television series Guddada Bhoota made by Mr. Suvarna still stood out vividly in her memory.
Prizes
In the short film category, The Flying Bird (Silent) won the first prize and The Tiffin Box (Konkani) won the second. In the documentary category, the first prize was won by I Am Not Alone which is a film about people who suffer from schizophrenia, and the second prize by Tulunada Garjane which is about tiger dance of the coastal region. Kodial Theru about the car festival in Mangalore won a special award for films in Konkani.
