Chairman’s Statement on setting up of the Whistling Woods Virtual Academy
‘Making creative education available to all who seek it.’
-Subhash Ghai
Apart from Film & Media education, one of the key concepts that Whistling Woods has been trying to proliferate is to enable creative education to have a greater reach across all echelons of society and all platforms of education.
One of the key reasons why film education is so niche is because, if you want to do it right, it has high capital infrastructure requirements per student educated. Which is why there have not been too many world-class film schools in India. When we commenced setting up Whistling Woods in 2002, we had decided that financial considerations would come second to building the ideal film & media school as needed by the industry, the kind of school that would create the next generation of filmmakers & media professionals in India. Over the past decade, we have done exactly that. In its 6 years of operation, Whistling Woods has achieved landmarks that no other educational institution has achieved in India — listed among the ten best film schools in the world and being invited to set up campuses in several other countries in the world.
However, given all the above, we are, today, still able to cater to only a few hundred students each year, given the infrastructure needed to deliver good campus-based education, and the time & cost that the students need to invest for career education in Film & Media. For a while now, we have been contemplating on how can we make this education available to all those who seek it, irrespective of the amount of free time they have or money they are willing to invest or their geographic location. We have had multiple brainstorming meetings and I believe that we have finally reached a position where we can attempt to open our education out to all those who deem it worthy of engaging in.
We give you the ‘Whistling Woods Virtual Academy’ — an online platform, which will provide to all those who seek it, film & media education that they desire and are willing to work hard to learn. At the WWVA, we have essentially built courses around the conceptual & theoretical understanding of film & media, which will enable a student to learn the non-practical aspects of film & media and leaving the decision to him on whether he would like to move ahead into becoming a filmmaker / media professional.
The curricula of the courses has been created by our highly qualified faculty at Whistling Woods and structured in audio-visual packages that would make it engaging and enlightening for the student. Also available on the WWVA are key master-classes and guest-lectures which have been conducted at Whistling Woods, Mumbai over the past 6 years by leading filmmakers, film professionals both from India and overseas. These excellently archived lectures are unique as they enable a deep understanding of the art & craft of filmmaking through the personal experiences of several stalwarts of the industry.
We would also be considering embellishing the online courses with a few offline visits to campuses and workshops, which will further enable the students understanding of key aspects of film & media.
I hope thousands of students will avail of this opportunity that our team has worked hard to bring to you in our attempt to make creative education available to all who seek it.
- Subhash Ghai, Filmmaker.
For more information, please contact:
Atul Malikram
9827092823