Hyderabad: The highlights of Day 6 at the 18th International Children’s Film Festival India, organized by the Children’s Film Society India, were a conference with the Afghan delegation and the fifth and last open forum of the festival on “Children with special needs: Representation in cinema” with an esteemed panel of filmmakers and activists.

The Afghan delegation at the 18th Golden Elephant comprised Zarlasht Sarmast who is an independent journalist and filmmaker, Jawed Wahabzada who has made a short film “Children of Kabul”, Paeman Arinfar who is an actor and director, S.Ali Mousavi Azad who has made a short film “Uncrowded), and Fardeen Barekzai who is an actor and director.

The members delegation spoke about education of women in Afghanistan, themes in Afghan films, popularity of Indian films there, difficulties faced in making movies, the interference of the government, and organizing film festivals in Kabul. Filmmakers in Afghanistan make documentaries and short films and distribute them online so that people watch them. Some of the Afghan documentaries they recommended are “Why Not Rock?”, “ANIM”, and “The Female Graffiti Painters.”

The panelists on the Open Forum were Ayodhya Kumar (director of the In Competition Live-Action Feature The Fireflies aka Minukumanna Minugurulu), Professor Hou Keming ( director of China Children’s Film Association ) , Nina Alexandra Dor ( assistant director of A Horse on the Balcony), Kavita Anand (vice-chairperson of Children’s Film Society India), and Sheila Rao (an NGO activist for children with special needs). The discussion was moderated by Shalini Gupta.

Professor Hou Keming said that it was important for people to become sensitive towards children with special needs. He said, “We need to talk to these children about their needs and desires, about what they like and what they do not, how they want us to behave, etc.The Chinese film My Running Shadow shows how a mother is devoted to well-being of her autistic son, putting his needs above her own. So the movie is quite inspiring and has a great message. People also need to become aware of various disabilities in children to become less judgemental.”

Nina Alexandra Dor from the team of A Horse on the Balcony in which the protagonist has Asperger’s Syndrome and is a gifted mathematician She explains, “Our film has a child actor and he spent months in training to play a child Mika with Asperger’s Syndrome. We spent a lot of time with children and psychiatrists to understand and correctly depict the behaviour. Funding for the movie was not a problem at all. The film has got great reviews from the critics and at festivals but when people read the synopsis about Asperger’s Syndrome they think it will be a tragedy even though it is an adventure and fun film.”

Activist Sheila Rao’s son was diagnosed with ID around 30 years ago and she took it upon herself to educate people about his disability. With her encouragement, her son began practicing Yoga and mastered it. That gave him confidence. Today, he is independent and has a job. Providing solutions for the problem, she says, “I have seen that children in classrooms are compassionate and accommodating towards their peers with ID. I suggest that people should volunteer and work with differently-abled children so that they feel loved and appreciated. It is immensely fun and gratifying to do this. Also, the phrases like ‘mentally retarded’ should be banned from the vocabulary.”

Ayodhya Kumar, director of The Fireflies, shared his experience of making the heart-rending movie with 40 visually-disabled children. He said, “I wanted to make a movie with actual visually-disabled children because it is completely their story of their plight in India. I wanted their participation so this film has also been shot by the same children. I went to do a film-making course in America with Kevin Bright, the creator of Friends, to train myself to make a film, use special cameras, and work with the visually-disabled. Also, I have produced the movie but I have not been successful in finding a distributor in India as yet.”

Kavita Anand, vice-chairperson of Children’s Film Society India talked about the depiction of differently-abled people in films. She says, “I have seen that in movies like Taare Zameen Par and My Name is Khan, we have actors portraying disabilities instead of the real people with disabilities. They should feature in more movies and documentaries so people get the real picture. Many-a-time, differently-abled characters, whether children or adults, are mocked upon and are the buffoons in the movies which has to change. There should be laws against mocking children with special needs in the media.”

The movies screened across the venues today were The Fireflies, Kaphal, Kauwboy, Goopi Gawaiyya Bagha Bajaiyaa, Horizon Beautiful, Hangama Bombay Ishtyle, and many others.

Source : Lokesh Shastri