A government school in Hingalganj in the Sunderbans held a workshop to teach students to make films on smartphones after realising that the girls and boys were glued to the screen for most of the day.
This is a new habit they have developed, fuelled by two years of online classes.
Kanaknagar SD Institution in Hingalganj decided to “put the addiction to good use”.
Around 30 students from Classes VIII to XI learnt to shoot, find stories, make videos and edit to make films of 1 to 10 minutes.
The workshop did not end when school hours finished but stretched further. When the students spent a few hours by a waterbody or the road outside their home, they tried “to capture the right shot”.
So when 16-year-old Maliha Mumtaz got a “home task” of taking 10 photos, she spent over two hours clicking them.
“I would have used the time to watch Insta reels, write comments on social media or play games on the phone,” said the Class XI student.
After in-person classes resumed in February, the school found students sneaking their phones into school and playing games or browsing social media in between classes.
“Instead of randomly browsing the internet with no definite purpose they can learn something and develop a skill,” said headmaster Pulak Roy Chowdhury.
With in-person classes resuming, the phone is no longer required but many of the students continued to tell their parents to recharge their devices.
Roy Chowdhury said that they will start a film club after a few months, an opportunity that students from the village rarely get.
Two independent filmmakers who work with students conducted the workshop in the Hingalganj school.
“The context here is different. The girls and boys want to make films on situations they face or see in their everyday life like the water problem in the Sunderbans or about a teenager like them who works at a local sweet shop,” said Bidisha Roy Das, who conducted the workshop with Priyanjana Dutta.
Roy Das said that making a film was a rigorous process from ideating and shooting to editing.
“It is not easy because for a film, I have to know from which angle I have to shoot, what is the subject and how my story is progressing,” said Class IX student Amitabha Mandal.