At the beginning of this semester I was invited by Prof. Sandeep Marwah, the Director of the Asian Academy of Film and Television in Film City, Noida, India, to conduct workshops for their Graduate and Undergraduate students in screenwriting, digital narrative shorts and documentaries.

Located in the suburbs of New Delhi, AAFT has about 400 students in 5 different basic programs: short courses that run for 3 months, year-long vocational courses, a 3-year BA course, a 2-year Masters course and Post-Graduate specialization courses.

The TV facilities are exceptional, with 4 huge soundstages where professional news and soap operas are shot regularly. My host, Prof. Marwah, has started a Film City there 2 decades ago, that by now has been built up by large TV Networks surrounding the school.

My workshops were received with great enthusiasm as I found the students quite serious and eager to learn, and I have come across quite a few ambitious projects. Almost all student projects focused on important social issues and had a progressive agenda.

In addition to my lectures and workshops I had a second goal: I wanted to shoot a couple of shorts on my Nokia 90 cell phone in co-production with Marwah Studios for a book that I am writing on this subject.

Little did I know that by announcing this at a news conference we would be flooded by media attention as \ the ‘Pioneers’ of Cell Phone Cinema in India.

The first of three narrative cell phone shorts was presented at the Tisch Undergraduate Film & TV faculty meeting on March 6th, 2007.

The following is an excerpt from my lectures and press conference announcements launching Cell Phone Cinema in India.