Filmi Chashma: children and movies

Filmi Chashma has emerged from observations and experiences we have had in the course of doing bal vividha and other projects. An idea initiated by Subha Das Mollick, our Kolkata-based associate, Filmi Chashma is centred around the notion of introducing children to good cinema.

The project offers three streams of activities:

generating a set of good short films for children by emerging young film makers enrolled at media training institutes.
initiating processes of critical media viewing among school teachers and interesting teachers in screening and production activities in their schools, using low cost digital technologies becoming ubiquitous all around us.
through the teachers, exposing school children to world class children's cinema, developing critical media viewing habits among them and mastery over simple media production technologies.

These year-round activities will culminate in a film festival called the Filmi Chashma Utsav, where awards for excellence will be given to the outstanding films by the young film makers. The jury will include children, teachers and film professionals.

The three parallel streams of activity are:

The project seeks to encourage and nurture recognition of children's films as a special genre of media in India. It also emphasises that seeing films in a framework of critical discussion and interpretation plays an important role in the overall cultural development of a child.

All around the year there are Filmi Chashma activities. Have a look at the Filmi Chashma calendar for details of events nearest to you and get in touch if you want to be part of them.

We offer travelling Filmi Chashma packages and invite proposals from any groups or institutions ready to host their own versions of the festival. If you are interested in partnering with us in holding a festival, please drop a line at: