Auroville Film Institute (AVFI) is a unit of Auroville Foundation, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education, Government of India.
Auroville is an intentional universal township commended by UNESCO as the first and only internationally endorsed ongoing experiment in human unity and transformation of consciousness. The Film Institute at Auroville concurs with the experimental ethos of Auroville, applying the integral education approach. AVFI’s curriculum designs are based on the principles of 3S: Self-Surrounding-Stories, encouraging filmmaking practices that spring from an inner truth while consciously interplaying with material realities around. The cinema-centric learning journeys at Auroville are designed to integrate world cinema and world citizenship, experimenting with a new pedagogy, encouraging new practices of conscious cinema – with a certain transformative potential.
Auroville Film Institute offers innovative short term courses, workshops and cinema-centric learning journeys in an experimental modality. The Guiding Principles of Auroville Film Institute are:
- Unending education and constant progress
- Technical training for mastery over the art and craft of filmmaking
- Time travel: Create narrative vehicles taking us from deepest within to farthest around in the past, present and the future; widening our consciousness, giving us ‘Darshan’/ insight
- Courageous flights between dreams, realities and alternatives
- Critical appreciation, mentoring and production of conscious cinema; also of innovative experimental multimedia art forms
- Human Unity
The Mother had envisioned “…a cinema studio, a cinema school…” in Auroville. Auroville Film Institute is an effort towards manifesting that vision. The overall curricular approach is inspired by the Mother’s Dream wherein she speaks of a place where one “would be able to grow and develop integrally…; where education would be given not for passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts but to enrich existing faculties and bring forth new ones…; Where work would be a way to express oneself and to develop one’s capacities and possibilities while being of service to the community as a whole…”
Richa Hushing and Rrivu Laha, both documentary filmmakers, are the Founders and Creative Directors of Auroville Film Institute – conceptualizing, curating and coordinating the courses. The curriculum design for each course/workshop is worked out in consultation with the specific course director/ visiting faculty.
Auroville Film Institute has its base camp in Bharat Nivas Campus, while the whole of Auroville, with some of the most enthralling regenerated forests and a futuristic city in the making with an international community of Aurovilians from 59 nationalities, nestled in rural Tamil neighborhood, can be considered as an extended ground of cinematic exploration and learning.
Auroville Film Institute 