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XAVERIAN FILM ACADEMY

Rajarshi Lahiri (Secretary)

As Xaverian Film Academy stepped into its second year of existence in St. Xavier’s College, we realized that it would be a difficult task for the new board of members to repeat the phenomenal success achieved by XFA in promoting Cinephilia among the students of college the previous year.

Initially, we concentrated all our attention in creating a fresh image of ourselves. We could no longer be referred to as the youngest or the newest academy. We had to prepare ourselves for bigger occasions. A dedicated team of designers immediately came up with spectacular designs which really helped in reinventing ourselves. Soon, XFA became a familiar name and when we held our first general meeting in the month of September, we had over 150 members.

Our first venture and our biggest challenge appeared in the form of ‘The Looking Glass 2010’ soon after. The event proved to be a landmark event in the history of the college. St. Xavier’s college, XFA and Nandan joined hands to bring to Kolkata a unique film festival with Nandan as venue, where we showcased a collection of excellent short films made by various students of the college as part of their semester projects. The quality of the films on show matched up to the great exposure these films received at this festival. XFA was proud to be able to provide the budding filmmakers of our college such an amazing platform to not only screen their films at Nandan but also interact with a huge audience.

Mr. Prosenjit Chatterjee, an icon in the film industry, was the Chief Guest for the occasion. He was full of praise for the quality work being done by the young filmmakers of St. Xavier’s College. XFA also felicitated Father Gaston Roberge during this prestigious occasion for his remarkable contribution to Film Studies in the country.

It was flattering to see hundreds of people from different walks of life turning up to view the short films during this festival which spanned 3 days in the month of September. An interesting trivia related to this event would be that ‘Looking Glass 2010’ was not in our agenda at the beginning of the year. A huge credit goes out to XFA president, Professor Gopalan Mullik, for his undying faith in the ability of the students and to all the members of XFA for having the nerve and the expertise to successfully organize a festival of this stature within a month.

Xaverian Film Academy hopes to carry on the good work and is already working on a couple of more film festivals scheduled for the beginning of 2011. The events planned for the future are an intra-college film festival ‘IMAGO’, which would be a competitive event among members of XFA, and a National level film festival, ‘CINEMATHEQUE’. Workshops on filmmaking are also being planned simultaneously.

XFA had been created to not only provide students of St Xavier’s college a forum for viewing films, but also to give them an opportunity to learn filmmaking, make their own films and showcase these films at various film festivals.