Thursday 7 March 2013

Cutting Chai with Bhawana Somaaya - Day 62

Whistling Woods Jai ho
6.3.2013, Mumbai

It is indeed a co-incidence that three Whistling Woods Alumni are the part of Oscar winning film Life of Pii and Subhash Ghai is a proud man. Six years ago when his daughter Meghna and he launched Whistling Woods they had a dream and today, the dream has come close to Oscars.

Says Ghai “A few weeks ago while my family and I was watching the 85th Academy Awards we were elated that director Ang Lee had 11 nominations and won four trophies (Best Picture, Best Cinematography Best Music and Best VFX). There were so many spectacular films this year but it was the story of India that caught the imagination of all.


That the special effects of Life of Pii were prominently done in Chennai is a moment of pride for the entire country. For us at Whistling Woods even more so because Murali Krishna/ part of Claudio Miranda's cinematography team and Kavan Ahalpara and Supreet Singh/part of Rhythmn & Hues VFX team for Life of Pii are WW students.

Interestingly out of the 800 graduates who passed out of various courses at Whistling Woods International, majority of them have been associated with prominent films made in recent times for instance Gangs of Wasseypur 1 & 2, No One Killed Jessica, Ra One, Shanghai, Aarakshan, Agneepath, Ferrari ki Sawari, Chillar Party, Yuvvraaj, Dum Maro Dum, Mausam, Peepli Live, Desi Boyz, Don 2, Rowdy Rathore, ABCD, Special 26 and recently Kai Po Che has a WW student engaged in some department of filmmaking.

A few months ago it was Abhishek Jain award winning director of Gujarati film Kevi Rite Jaish thanking Ghai for his training at WWI and now it is Kavan Alphara, another WWI alumni thanking the animation school for harnessing his skills to become what he is today.

Like they say it all begins in the Gurukul…

Bhawana Somaaya/ www.bhawanasomaaya.com

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