05 January,2011 07:14 AM IST | | Debarati Palit
Three films from Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) have been selected for the student competition category at the Pune International Film Festival to be held from January 6. The films Radhika Murthy's Motorbike, Swati Khatri's Reflection and Arunima Sharma's Shyam Raat Seher have been directed by FTII graduates.
The PIFF has films in the student category from 60 countries including some top institutes and amateur filmmakers.u00a0 "I want to see the feedback my film gets from film lovers here. It's a great feeling. Though I am not worried about the competition, it feels good when my film got included among such a wide range of films," said Murthy, who passed out in 2010 and is a Punekar.
Motorbike is a 20-minute short film. It's about a young girl who wants to ride a bike and takes her father's bike, but dashes it. She has no money to repair the bike and her father refuses to give her the money. The story tells her journey, how she repairs the bike, and the bonding between the bike, the girl and the mechanic.u00a0
Murthy's film was also screened at the International Film Festival of India (IIFI), Goa.
Shyam Raat Seher, directed by Arunima Sharma, is a drama with a bit of humour.u00a0 It is a story about a television actor, whose career is fading, so to revive and prove himself as a serious actor he decides to do experimental theatre and plays the character of Lord Krishna. The same night his wife leaves him and to stop her he has to rush to the airport in the same make-up. Various people see him and it is about their reaction to him.
These films also made the rounds of IFFI in Goa, Alpaviram at National Institute of Design and Camerimage in Poland. For Sharma, it's about getting exposure than winning. "Students' films do not get too much of exposure and I feel happy when so many more people see my film," she adds.