An extract from the opening address by Dr Jabbar Patel, Director of PIFF 2008, “Every year we strive to add-on a distinct new area to our festival and this year it has been provided to us by the Whistling Woods International Student Film Competition. Subhash Ghai has come through on his promise to promote institutional film education and has constituted a special competitive section in PIFF for students of film institutes across the world, being co-ordinated and run by his film institute – Whistling Woods International. This competition has provided a platform for film students to evaluate themselves along-side their global peers. I would rate this section as one of the primary highlights of PIFF 2008 and urge one and all to definitely view these films.”
The competition was divided into two sections - Live Action and Animation. On Jan 14, 2008, the top 20 (10 Live action and 10 Animation) films selected from over a 150 films sent by students from various film schools across the world were played out in front of a packed audience. The seats being full, the audience took to sitting in the aisles to watch these global student masterpieces. The jury for the live action contest comprised of Sergey Stanojkovski, Dana Modan and K.S Sasidharan and for the Animation section was Ashish Kulkarni, Vaibhav Kumaresh and Vincent Edwards.
The jury, being pleasantly surprised at the conceptual clarity and maturity of the films commented on how film schools across the world greatly hone talented aspirants to competent film-makers