The Animation Society of Kolkata was formed just recently and pronto, the ‘TASK’ force is already yielding results!
Organised by TASK, ‘Kol.Katha’ is Kolkata’s very own Animation Film Festival which inaugurates tomorrow (26th Feb 09) at Kala Mandir from 9.00 am in the morning to late evening. Close to a thousand animation lovers from the city of joy are expected to attend the event which boasts the presence of superstars including Vaibhav Kumaresh, Sekhar Mukerjee and Prosenjit Ganguly amongst others.
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com from the venue amidst the preparations, TASK Founder Ramesh Ruia who is also the Director of Arena Park Street shared, “TASK was conceived as a forum for exchange of ideas related to the animation industry in this part of the country. Bengal is a cradle of culture and creativity in India, but unfortunately there was no platform where this creativity could be nurtured. TASK will fill that lacuna and Kol.Katha is our first initiative.”
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“The people in this region are not aware of the kind of work happening in the animation industry and are lacking for want of benchmarks. Kol.Katha has attracted some of the best animation work from all over the country which will be recognized, awarded and showcased to the visitors. We also have a strong program line up including VFX Case Studies, workshops in pixellation, puppet animation while the highlight of the festival is Teen Phodon.”
Kolkata has a very famous ‘seasoning’ known as Paanch Phodon (Five flavors) … using that as a theme, the Teen Phodon session at Kol.Katha will have the flavors of animation by Vaibhav, Sekhar Mukerjee and Prosenjit. Shared Prosenjit, “The session is going to have an exemplary introspection of work in terms of the way each of us approach animation including its cultural context as well as the treatment. The thing that we are looking at is variety, for e.g. Sekhar does a lot of comic work and cartoons and teaches as well, Vaibhav does a lot of commercials and I work with kids and on creating IP, we will give a wide palette to the audience and explain the range of possibilities”
“Overall we want things to be interactive, light-hearted and art centric” he added.
Following is the program line up for Kol.Katha
10am – 10:30am
Inauguration
Inaugural Address by Guest of Honour
Feliciation of Shri Chandi Lahiri, eminent cartoonist
10:30am – 12pm
“Teen-Phodon”
Speakers – Sekhar Mukherjee, Vaibhav Kumaresh & Prosenjit Ganguly
1pm – 1:30pm
Lunch Break
1:30pm – 3:30pm
Pixilation
Screening and Voting of nominated films
3:30pm – 5pm
Tabulation of results
Dumb charades / Lucky draw
Award Distrubution
Screening of film produced by a live
sand animation/clay animation workshop
The Advisory board for TASK Includes Sekhar Mukerjee, Vaibhav Kumaresh, Prosenjit Ganuguly, Aniruddha Roy Chaudhary, Arijit Dutta, Bickram Ghosh and Dr Madhuja Mukerjee.
Anxiety is that we would like this event to roll out without glitches, they should be happy and have a good time with take away….