While Yash Chopra has been building a studio to outshine other studios in Andheri, Subhash Ghai has been building the mother of all media training institutes in Goregaon. Spread across 20 acres inside Film City, whistling Woods International is being put into place brick by brick. The institute is promoted by Ghai’s production house Mukta Arts, and plans to start courses in various aspects of film-making – from acting to production – by July 15. A giant circular building with five storey, 26 classrooms, a library, and several studios, WWI is keen to live up to its claims of being “international” and “world-class”. “We needed an international-level institute in Bombay, ”said Meghna Ghai Puri, the institute’s director and Subhash Ghai’s daughter. “Eighty per cent of the industry as no format training.”

The courses offered cut across the disciplines of direction, production, editing and cinematography. An extensive animation course is another carrot. “We want to create students who will move into the industry and work creatively, “says Kurt Inderbitzin, the Institute’s dean, who’s been imported from America. “The students need to understand what it takes to tell a good story.” Inderbitzin resorts to “India Shining” terminology to describe what the institute hopes to achieve. “India is blooming,” says the former producer and filmmaker. “As the country develops, thins inevitably begin to change, and people start investing in education. People also start to demand different types of fare. Technology is changing so fast you need to train people to handle the change.”

Of the handful of film training institutes now in operation, the government-run Film and Television Training Institute of India remains the most prestigious, in part duet o a prolonged spasm of creativity in the 1960s and 1970s that gave cinema some of its greatest names. Other institutes, among them, the Satyajit Ray Film Training Institute in Kolkata and the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, have been putting media students into the market for years. The WWI is at a remove from these: it’s the first institute of its kind to be situated in he capital of Hindi Cinema, and it appears to be pitching itself to technicians who would help Bollywood adopt Hollywood-style slickness.

“FTII gets into European cinema while Bollywood and Hollywood get ignored, “says Puri Ghai. “We offer a balance between aesthetics and business. We’re not saying Whistling Woods will only concentrate on mainstream cinema. We’ll offer he students the chance to be who they want to be.’ She denies that there’s a crisis of talent in Bollywood, and feels that it’s time to replace the instinctual filmmakers of yore with trained movie makers. “There isn’t a crisis that we’re tapping into, “she says. “I would say this is a revolution. Eminent people form the industry who’ve done good work want to give back.”

The institute isn’t subsidized which means that students will be expected to shell out up to Rs. 12 lakh for a two-year course. It’s no small sum at all, and clearly puts WWI on par with business schools in terms of its fee structure. “We want the institute to be available to anybody in India,” Inderbitzin clarifies. “We’re building an endowment fund that would help students. I want this place to be elite, but not elitist.”

That WWI aims at being Bollywood’s future talent shop is evident in the army of names associated with the Institute – the faculty includes academics as well as working professionals. The roster reads like a cast list from one of Ghai’s multi-starrers. Shyam Benegal heads the Academic council, wit Arune Raje as his deputy. Naseeruddin Shah heads the acting course, Hema Malini and Shaimak Davar will teach dance. The advisory board includes Jabbar Patel, Mahesh Bhatt, Karant Johar, Ronnie Screwvala, Shah Rukh Khan, Saroj Khan and Shabana Azmi. They will all train the task force that the Hindi film Industry will eventually hire, thus keeping it all in the family, as Bollywood tends to do. NR Registrations for Whistling Woods International close by May 25.