Sunday 20 July 2014

Influencing Real-Life Societal Changes Through Documentaries: A Workshop


The most important phase of measuring the power of a documentary film is not its production and release, or how many people have seen it.  But in asking whether a specific documentary has been successful in causing a real life change in the society, said Sophie V Sivaraman, Chief Executive of Indian Documentary Foundation (IDF) the moderator in an “Impact Campaign Workshop” organized by Indian IDF in partnership with Kerala State Chalachitra Academy (KSCA), held yesterday at Hotel Hycinth in the city.
Other panelists included Rahul Merchant, Harsha Mukherjee, Amlan Ganguly and Suzoy Banerjee. Rahul founded Luminosity in 2011 which is behind the marketing and releaseof films like ‘I am Kalam’, Mahabharatha (animation) and Nagesh Kukunoo’s Lakshmi. Harsha Mukherjee is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who have been selected as one of the “Top 10 Indian Women Entrepreneurs” by DELL Women Entrepreneur Network (DWEN-2012). Amlan is founder of the Non-profit organization Prayasam and Suzoy Banerjee is a communication engineer.
The two day workshop is an outreach forum that is targeted to describe definite plans a filmmaker puts in place to make sure their film is seen by certain groups of people, often with quite specific ends in mind. In other words, making a documentary films which reaches to the people who are powerful enough to make changes in the society, other than the common audience.
This can cover a wide variety of efforts, such as: getting a film in front of politicians to influence policy making or using a film to motivate local changes – local ordinances or community practices. The workshop also covers effective methods to make a documentary reach to the right audiences and also the ways to get funding for ones’ film.

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