KOCHI: “India is the place to be”, says Kurt Inderbitzin emphatically. After more than a decade of directing and producing feature films and television movies in the United States, Kurt turned his eyes to India. Then, he headed the Asia’s largest film and television school Whistling Woods in Mumbai. However, now Kurt’s focus is on his new venture, the International School of Film and Media sprawling across 22-acre campus, in Hyderabad. It is run on a non-profit model.Pointing to his hair Kurt said, “As I turned older, wider and greyer, I felt the best kind of education is run on non-profit basis. Take the best schools across the world, they are all non-profit institutions. What India needs today is a world class institution of higher education. When it comes to media, according to the figure released by FICCI, India needs as many as three million new employees in the next decade. However, how many reputed film schools does India have?” he asked.“The opportunity here is huge. The vibrancy is all around you. When you go to United States or Europe, the whole atmosphere is damp. Here people are positive about a bright future. More and more people from the poor section are being pushed to the middle class and this is a great thing for the media industry. When people move to the richer sections, what they first look for is information, for media. If you look at the Indian villages, expansion of the media is one thing that is evident. Today, the initial costs for setting up communication has come down. So it is possible for even villages to access media at low costs,” he said.Kurt is well aware of the challenges lying ahead. “One of the greatest problems faced by the media industry is the absence of students who can communicate well. Be it journalists or script writers, the problem is that we have students who cannot communicate well. Even though the number of English speaking students in India is higher than USA and UK, the number of students who have is read good literature is less. Students in other counties learn a language by reading and appreciating good texts from the language. This seems to be absent in the school curriculum here. So to develop it at the graduate level becomes difficult,” he added. “However, things are improving. For example, if you look at films like Delhi Belly or Ra.One, what you see is a cleverly crafted script,” he said.
Comments
0 comment