India’s most prestigious film festival-Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival recognises the enlightening, entertaining & progressive new age cinema of youth & experienced filmmakers every year. This year, six students of Lovely Professional University have been honoured at its 6th session for their ad-film ‘DoCoMo-Do the New’. This ad-film has been awarded as the ‘Best Advertisement’ over entries from across India and 45 countries, in the students’ category. Award winning students are from B Sc II Year program of LPU School of Journalism & Film Production. All of them belong to different and distant states of India- Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal. Preetham Dev is the director of the ad-film, Gopidi Vamshi Krishna; cinematographer, Shubham Malakar is screen playwright, Deepak Kumar; Editor, and Anish Kashyap is an actor. The B.Com student, Shyambhu Poddar has worked for Human Resource and is from LPU School of Business.
The Ad film, which is an inspiration, teaches the viewers to take a lead in bringing about a solution to the common problem existing in the society. Such an example is then followed by the multitude in no time. The ad-film opens up with a hosteller looking disgusted at the dishevelled condition of the sink where the unwashed dishes are placed. He makes an effort to pile-up all the unwashed dishes and glasses in perfect order, making sufficient place for others to follow. Soon the place seems cleaner and breathable. The Ad film was produced by Hocus Focus Films, a student-run in-house production studio at LPU. The students of Journalism and Film Production have strived to create many youth-centric short films that have won many accolades.
LPU Chancellor Mr Ashok Mittal congratulated the team and implored the students to continue with their creative work in order to pursue a brilliant career ahead. Mr. Mittal was also pleased to inform that another LPU student, Ahsif Khan had been honoured for his short -film ‘Poster’ at the 4th session of Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival held in the year 2014.
Sharing their excitement, the winners added, “We are overwhelmed to be presented with such a prestigious award. It was a neck-to-neck competition and having won this award makes us feel truly great. We are all glad to be associated with this ad-film in one or the other way and as a team of like-minded persons. No doubt, we hail from different parts of the country, but our creativity never knew any boundary. We worked hard as per the culture of our multi-ethnic university, and the fruitful result is before all of us.”
Illustrative, the festival celebrates the cinema & work of aspiring, young, independent & professional filmmakers. This festival is very important for the Indian film industry. Film fraternity across India & globe organises it on 30th April of each year to mark the birth anniversary of the father of Indian Cinema- Dada Saheb Phalke (Dhundiraj Govind Phalke). At present, the festival is attracting filmmakers from across India & 45 other nations across the world. It has multiple sections for feature films, short films, documentaries, animations, music videos, and ad films.
