Category: Lookit!

Categories
Event

200 participate in Transplant Games

Transplant Games 2012 by Narmada Kidney Foundation
Transplant Games 2012 by Narmada Kidney Foundation
Organ donors and recipients participate in the sporting event held in Mumbai on Sunday. A pitch report from the organisers.

The nation has seen the best of performances by Indian sportsmen in recent times. Mumbai was witness to another national sporting event, which was very different from other sporting events – this was the ‘National Transplant Games’, organised by the Non-Government Organisation (NGO), Narmada Kidney Foundation, for the fifth consecutive year. The Games were held at Goregaon.

Transplant Games 2012 by Narmada Kidney FoundationAs per estimates, about 200 patients from across the length and breadth of the country participated in the Transplant Games held on Sunday. Dr Bharat Shah, founder of the Foundation said, “This is one of the most emotionally overwhelming events for us. It is such a pride and pleasure to watch the enthusiasts coming from different parts of the country to participate in the Games. This event has been inspiring not only many potential recipients and donors, but also the Foundation to keep working in this direction relentlessly.”

The Transplant Games 2012 encapsulated outdoor and indoor games, especially organised for the transplant recipients and the organ donors. The objective of these Games is to demonstrate the success of organ transplantation and paint a big, positive and hopeful picture for the future donors and transplant patients. The Games underscore the significance of care, compassion and contribution.

Dr Shah further added, “Every year, approximately four lakh people are diagnosed with the last stage of acute kidney failures, of which only 4,000 patients are fortunate to get a kidney transplant. Approximately 10,000 patients are put at the helm of dialysis, which is an expensive modality with poor quality of life and poor long term survival. The approximate cost of dialysis is Rs 25,000 per month and the cost keeps increasing with the passing time for the patient.”

Approximately 2,000 patients on dialysis are waiting to receive kidney transplant in Mumbai alone. At the current rate, it would take 10 to 15 years for a dialysis patient on the cadaver wait list to receive a transplant. The present situation is alarming, as many patients would exhaust their resources on dialysis when they have their turn for a transplant. There are patients to tell their own stories of struggle, suffering and fighting for the life merely waiting for the day when they would be able to receive a transplant of the critical organ, like kidneys.

(Pictures courtesy Narmada Kidney Foundation)

 

Categories
Event

Go for COFFI

Short Film festival invites entries from new filmmakers and film institutes; six prizes are up for grabs in three categories.
by The Diarist | thediarist@themetrognome.in

If you’ve made a short film and are looking for a good competition to enter it in, you just got lucky. Or, putting it in another way, if you’ve made a short film and are still readying it for competition, you’re cutting it extremely fine.

The Conference on Film Finance (COFFI) and Awards is giving you the chance to show your film to those who matter the most – filmmakers, producers, film investors and lenders – by bringing the Short Films Contest 2012. The finalists’ films will be screened at COFFI and the winning films will be screened at Shamiana Club. The Awards night is scheduled for December 18, 2012.

The competition has three categories – Short Films, Animated Films and Documentaries, all with a running duration of not more than 15 minutes. Last submission date is December 3, 2012, and if you’re a student submitting a film, your entry fee would be Rs 1,000. For others, the fee is Rs 1,500.

For more details on the competition, list of conference attendees and prizes for winners, log on to coffi@sixsigmafilms.com.

(Picture courtesy astro.temple.edu. Picture used for representational purpose only) 

 

Categories
Do

How Crude!

These women debunk the idea of art being elitist, unreachable and beyond the realm of ordinary understanding through Crude Area.

It’s a small firm as of now – having started operations a month ago in Bandra – but Crude Area has already signed up 20 artists, some of them international names. So probably there is some truth in what they say: all it takes for a great idea to take off is some talent and a whole lot of sincerity.

Bindu Nair Maitra (in the featured image on the left), of the duo that started Crude Area – the other is Shweta Bhandari – as a platform for graphic art, artists and buyers from all over the world, spoke to The Metrognome about the whys and hows of starting the business. “The bingo moment for me (about starting Crude Area) came after I had placed a big order of lovely T-shirts on a famous American website, and over a month later, the order just never reached me. There was a problem at Customs, and though the site refunded my money, I was frustrated to know that merely being willing to pay for things was not enough – those things had to reach consumers, too.”

Bindu has worked in advertising,  and has always loved graphic art – this helps her curate work for the site, while Shweta handles business development. “We target urban professionals in the 25 to 40 age bracket, who are people wanting to do up their homes in ways that express who they were. It was such a simple idea – to bring contemporary graphic art to people at a reasonable price, to customise it as per their needs – and it slowly took shape. We started with art prints, but our future plans include designing iPhone cases, decals, and helping people ‘do up’ walls in their homes,” she says.

However, the focus is on showcasing contemporary Indian graphic art that has moved beyond the “Horn Ok Please category,” as Bindu puts it, and on work that is not kitschy or ‘exotic Indian art’. “Our work is representative of India today, and we provide art that people want for their homes. In a city like Mumbai, where so many people live in rented apartments and are not allowed to drill holes into their walls, we have art that can be stuck on walls.” The pricing is more than competitive, too – the smallest works cost Rs 1,750 and the largest prints are priced at Rs 9,000.

“We’re not offering fine art at all, just lovely contemporary graphic art that nobody else is offering in the country at the moment,” Bindu says. “Also, we’re looking for artists wanting to display their work. The artist has to sign up with us, send us high resolution images of their work, and we do the printing and shipping as per customers’ demand.” The company promises that the product will be delivered to your doorstep within seven days of placing the order; its operations currently include Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

A major learning thus far for the duo has been that more Indian men than women are interested in purchasing quality art for their homes. “Also, we’re constantly reinventing – art is a very subjective thing for everybody, so we’re catering to different tastes all the time. There is so much talent waiting to be showcased, and so many people looking to purchase quality art at a great price. We fulfil the need for both,” Bindu says.

Browse, shop or simply check out graphic art at www.crudearea.com.

Categories
Film

Brand new stories

It seems like Bollywood just can’t do without brand integration in its films. The newest example is Aamir Khan’s ‘Talaash’.
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Brands and products have been used in films for a very long time now, under the guise of innovation. Terms like brand integration and product placements have recently been coined and abused ever since. While brands have been seamlessly woven into certain films’ narratives, even in films from the Dev Anand and Rajesh Khanna era, the truth is that the lone objective of these deals these days is to mint money. At times, the entire production budget can be recovered with multiple brand promotions in a single film.

Many films have tried and tested this formula but few have succeeded in carrying this out subtly, without in-your-face promotions. Don 2 deserves an honorary mention in affiliating with Tag Heuer watches and Microsoft flawlessly. The brands carry the same value associated with the characters in the film – haute and tech savvy – thus making it a good fit. Even the on-screen time dedicated to the products was not overly long.

But at other times, you wonder: why are teens endorsing bourbon biscuits for Student of the Year, when clearly they have been starving to look as skinny as poles for the film? Where is the connect? There’s an increasing tendency to force brands into films’ promotions, despite many brands not fitting in with the overall storyline at all.

Windows 8 tied up with Aamir Khan starrer Talaash (releases November 30, 2012) and the commercial has being doing the rounds of the Internet and TV. As long as the ad features an intense Aamir Khan, I don’t have a problem with it – I just don’t want Aamir, in the film, to tell the audience how Windows 8 helped him solve the mystery.

Talaash’s brand integration reminds me of an interesting anecdote – a story of a director-producer who thought of reinventing this concept.

This is a true story.

In his film, a song featuring various communication devices like phone, PC, et al in the new age presented a great opportunity for making some quick moolah. For one of the scenes in the songs, the over-confident director used a mobile handset manufactured by a leading company without striking a deal with them first – he thought he could ask for endorsement money once the film was complete and the marketing kicked in.

The brand was approached for money a couple of months before the film’s release. To his astonishment, however, the brand rejected the business proposition. The reason? The phone used in the film was out of production and they didn’t want to promote it. The deal never happened.

For another film, a handset manufacturer asked for money from the producers to use the product. This is a reverse of the concept. In this case, the film was a small banner production, so the brand had leverage. Of course, the deal never happened.

Films like Ra.One and Don 2 have set benchmarks for brand integration in the Hindi film industry, and now, every film runs after brands like they’re the elixir of life. Special agencies to look after this concept have been set up in media companies, while new ones keep mushrooming with every film. It’s almost like Bollywood’s forgotten to make money from other avenues, like storytelling, for instance.

As long as it’s done in a fashion that doesn’t mess with the entertainment value attached to the film and doesn’t annoy the audience (like the Amitabh Bachchan film Viruddh), it’s totally okay. Make all the money you want, but here’s a sincere appeal: after recovering your costs and making a profit, keep the ticket prices low. The reason I walked away from watching Jab Tak Hai Jaan was the Rs 400 ticket price; though it did turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Moral of the story: Plot your brands before the script is frozen, and plot them well.

(Pictures courtesy koimoi.com and rateon10.com)

Categories
Event

Laugh and save a child’s sight

Stand up comedy show will raise funds for eye treatment of BMC school children at YB Chavan Auditorium this evening.
by The Diarist | thediarist@themetrognome.in

What’s a fun way to raise funds for a serious cause? Have a stand-up comedy show featuring some seriously funny comics, that’s what. It’s an idea that will hopefully make enough money to treat 10,000 children with preventable blindness and other eye problems.

The Rotary Club of Bombay Central and Rotaract Club of the Caduceus are organising ‘Eye Stand Up’, a show featuring stand up comics Aditi Mittal, Tanmay Bhat, Karan Talwar, Gursimran Khamba and

International comic star Andy Zaltzman will also perform, while DJ and Submerge founder Nikhil Chinappa will be chief guest at the event, which will be held at YB Chavan Auditorium, Nariman Point, this evening.

The cause

We usually do not associate problems of sight with young children. In fact, it is this mindset that often prevents the treatment of several treatable eye problems in children. Recognising this, the Rotaract Club of the Caduceus, a city-based group of 135 doctors, dentists, medical students and paramedics under 30 years of age, adopted a preventable blindness programme and is working towards treating the eye problems of 10,000 children from BMC schools by end of January 2013.

Says Pankaj Jethwani, one of the Club’s members and organisers for the check up camps held in schools and slum communities, “India is home to 1.5 crore visually-challenged people – that is like two Switzerlands put together! However, eight out of 10 people can get their sight restored or their problem treated with a simple operation, but there is very low awareness among people. Besides, several people cannot afford even the Rs 1,200 surgery, plus the drugs and spectacles.”

However, the cost was brought down to Rs 50 per person through bulk operations; this includes screening, treatment, managed referrals, deworming, Vitamin A prophylaxis and risk-pooling for surgery. “When we went to BMC schools, we found that some children had myopia, or a spectacle number of 1.2. They couldn’t see the blackboard, and so they didn’t feel like studying at all.” Pankaj says he was surprised to note that 13 per cent of children had undiagnosed myopia, and that none of the children screened had ever been to an ophthalmologist.

He says they’ve treated about 2,800 children in the last 55 days, and hope to complete the target of 10,000 children in two months. “The treatment has been on-the-spot for most, but if surgery is required, it is done for free at BYL Nair and KEM Hospitals. We provide spectacles, manage infections, and refer cataract and squint cases for free surgery. We also conducted surprise checks to see if the children were adhering to the treatment we had prescribed; 92 per cent of them were.”

The event

The Club initially wanted to organise a marathon to raise funds for the programme, but then finally decided on a stand up-comedy event. “We love these comics – everybody follows them on Twitter and everyone wants to see them live. We got the venue and sponsors on board very quickly. But we will use the money we get strictly for the programme.” Plus, Cafe Mocambo will sponsor an exclusive after-party for those who attend the show.

(Picture courtesy www.betterphoto.com) 

 

Categories
Watch

Prepare your US college interview on TV

US Consulate and Channel [V]’s reality show will send two Indian students to US colleges for interview and campus experience.

If you are looking up colleges in the US, you might want to consider the option of trying for a paid trip to three premium colleges in America. Plus, you could be on TV.

The US Consulate Mumbai, in association with Channel [v] India, is bringing College Hunt USA, a three-episode reality show to Indian television in 2013. The show will feature two selected Indian students who will win an all-expenses-paid trip to visit three US colleges for an admission interview and an experience of American campus life. As per rules, registrations are open for Class 12 Indian students looking to study in the US only. Students can register at http://www.channelv.in/collegehuntusa/ and visit the Facebook page www.facebook.com/CollegeHuntUSA for more information.

Speaking about the show, Consul General Peter Haas said, “We are excited to partner with Channel [v] India on this project, where we will reach out to millions of young Indians. Currently over one lakh Indian students are studying in the US and we hope to offer the experience of an American campus and world-class education to many more. Through such initiatives, the US aims to build stronger people-to-people ties and help make the most of all of our young people’s talents.”

Confirming the association, Prem Kamath, GM and EVP of Channel [v] India said, “The importance of education is ingrained in our culture and one of the biggest aspirations is to experience life on campus abroad. We are extremely proud to facilitate such an opportunity for our viewers. We are really excited about the property as we get a chance to show something completely contrasting to our programming, yet so revered by our audiences.”

(Picture courtesy www.outlookindia.com)

Exit mobile version