Jodhpur : Jodhpur Award-cum-Screening of 16th Nature International Documentary Film Festival on behalf of Faculty of Educational Communication (CEC) hosted by EMMRC of Jai Narayan Vyas University, Jodhpur from 4th to 6th December at Jaynarayan Vyas Smriti Bhawan Town Hall. The festival is being inaugurated by Rajasthan Governor Haribhau Bagde in a ceremony at 11 am. CEC Director Professor JB Nadda told the media in Jodhpur that 13 films will be screened in the film festival to create awareness among the students and the general public.
These films have been previewed and selected after a rigorous process by a team of eminent juries. The winning documentaries of Prakriti International Documentary Film Festival are awarded a cash prize of Rs 50,000 in addition to a screening certificate and trophy. He informed that, CEC organizes Nature International Documentary Film Festival every year to encourage filmmakers/film lovers and to make youth aware about issues like environment, development, human rights and Swachh Bharat (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan).
The first Nature Festival was held in 1997. Since then, it has been planned as an annual event that gathers filmmakers, students, academicians, administrators, development workers and the media to come together and appreciate the artistic style of documentary filmmaking. Promoting awareness, appreciation and action, the Nature Festival is a step towards a broad coalition of people working on educational aspects of equality, ethics, ecology and cleanliness. Dr Sunil Mehru, Joint Director of CEC and Coordinator of the Nature Film Festival Speaking to the media, a total of 68 entries were received for the Prakriti International Documentary Film Festival this year. These included entries from South East Asian countries like Myanmar, Philippines and Bangladesh.
CEC actively organizes Nature International Documentary Film Festival to promote ICT-based environment creation on various social topics to enable its learners to develop holistically by finding congruence in learning and developing understanding of multiple subjects/topics of interest. Dr. Mehru said that in the 16th Nature Documentary Film Festival, Bani Prakash Das’s ‘Adhikar Li Lado’ was selected in the development category, P. Raghupathi’s ‘Reaching the Unreached’, Sajid Naduthodi’s ‘Raised of Rhythms’ in the Swachh Bharat category and Prakash Katre’s ‘Green Man’ in the Human Rights category have been selected for the Best Awarded Documentary. Apart from this, the jury has selected 9 documentaries for screening. EMMRC Jodhpur Director Professor BR Gadi said that all the preparations for the film festival have been completed.
Jodhpur has got the opportunity to host the Nature Film Festival after 14 years. Express gratitude to CEC Director for this. It is noteworthy that University Grants Commission (UGC) has an inter-university center. Its objective is to meet the needs of higher education by developing educational media content and disseminating it through various online and offline media. The vision of CEC is to increase access to higher education to more of the population in the country and beyond by using ICT to empower the sector of digital higher educational content dissemination. Further, CEC has initiated empowerment of persons with disabilities, especially hearing impaired, by developing and incorporating sign language enabled content in the form of video lectures/educational programs to overcome the learning difficulties of these students. CEC’s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are being developed to make educational content available anytime, anywhere to strengthen the democratization of education. Additionally, in recognition of CEC’s expertise in digital education, the Education The Ministry has entrusted the responsibility of translating its entire digital educational repository into 12 regional languages to CEC under the Matribhasha Prachar Abhiyan recommended in NEP 2020.
