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College offers a world of opportunities and Prashant Parvataneni admits that he is gaining much from his alma mater.
Hailing from Chhattisgarh, he is pursuing MA in English in Communication from Christ University. His love for theatre, film criticism and film making is taking him to greater heights.
Though he calls his achievements “a learning process”, he has been winning awards in the creative field.
He had formed a theatre group called ‘For a Cause Production’ with his friends and recently took part in an inter-college programme where he won the first prize.
“We enacted a two-hour play of Chandrashekhara Kambara a couple of months ago at our college. It was a difficult task but was great fun,” he says. “My work in the theater field is not as great as compared to other achievers, but I’m happy to have done the plays that I have and I look forward to many more,” he adds.
During his undergraduate days, Prashant also discovered his love for paper presentations. He recalls, “There’s a national seminar that takes place in our college called ‘Reading Indias’. I wanted to write about the filmmaker, Mani Kaul, and one my teachers encouraged me to write about him. It was a great privilege for me to be part of it because paper presentations are usually done by post-graduate students. Thanks to this platform, I could bring him back into discussion with my paper ‘Understanding Films of Mani Kaul as Pure Cinematic Narratives’.” Needless to say, his paper was awarded the best presentation.”
When he took a break before his post-graduation, he also published a paper on ‘Digital Cinema’ that was published in the Christ University journal.
Apart from presenting papers, he also enjoys critically analysing films and publishing them on his blog and other publications. But he says one of his best moments was when a popular filmmaker appreciated his work.
“In my blog where I reviewed a documentary called ‘Gulabi Gang’ and shared the blog link on my Facebook wall, the filmmaker approached and told me that I did a good job analysing it,” he says.
He recently directed a documentary titled ‘Almost Home’ and won the ‘Best Film’ at Jyotifilmato — a short film festival at Jyoti Nivas College sponsored by the University Grants Commission.
He says it was a great honour to be judged by Ananya Kasaravalli, a documentary filmmaker.
About his film, he says, “The film was about my home and the people who stay around. I wanted to bring about a relationship with them and get to know their story — what they think about Bengaluru and whether they feel at home or not.
It was very interesting to know the local people because they came from different places, different backgrounds. To bring all of that aspect — their personal story — in the movie was an exciting project.”
Thanks to his love for filmmaking, he has also been part of many film festivals.
He is the coordinator of the film society in Christ University, where one film is screened every week and students discuss about it on a weekly basis.
Since he is in his final year of post-graduation, he hopes to do his PhD and teach
Literature and Cinema to students.