Film academy architect: K Hariharan

When the Chennai-based Prasad Group, Asia’s largest provider of post-production services in the film and video industry, promoted the L.V. Prasad Film & TV Academy in 2005 to commemorate 50 years of the Prasad Group (established in 1956 by veteran filmmaker L.V. Prasad), highly regarded film director, educator and columnist K. Hariharan was the unanimous choice as director of the academy. Two years later, this academy sited on the sprawling six-acre campus of the bustling Prasad Studios in Chennai, has acquired an excellent reputation for providing its students world-class film and video education, with the added benefit of interacting and working with renowned film technicians and creative artists who visit Prasad Studios regularly. Moreover, the academy‚s state-of-the-art infrastructure including digital sound recording and dubbing theatres, film laboratory, a dedicated shooting floor, contemporary equipment, video cameras and a huge library of books and DVDs gives its students a flying start in India‚s booming feature films and television industries.

The academy offers two-year postgraduate diploma courses in film direction and cinematography (fee: Rs.2 lakh per year), and a one-year diploma in editing and sound design (Rs.1.65 lakh) to 30 students (ten in each course) who are instructed by 12 full-time faculty and 15 visiting film and television industry professionals. The syllabus drawn up by Hariharan with inputs from eminent film professionals is designed to integrate allied arts with the aesthetics of cinema and television. “Our objective is to nurture filmmakers with a holistic vision of cinema as an extension of the liberal arts. Conventional cinema pedagogies are based on the European and American models which are not quite suitable for Indian conditions. We advocate the study of Indian cinema and Indian best practices in filmmaking. The dominant focus of our syllabus is narrative style, content and creativity as the essence of Indian cinema,” says Hariharan, an alumnus of Bombay University and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune who has directed seven feature films including the highly acclaimed Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal (1978) and the Tamil Ezhavathu Manithan which bagged the national award for the best Tamil film in 1982. Moreover, he directed a Hindi film Current which won the best critics award in 1992.

Film making apart, Hariharan brings a wealth of teaching experience to his job as director of the L.V. Prasad Academy. His curriculum vitae includes four years as a lecturer at the Adyar Film Institute, Chennai; visiting faculty at the University of Pennsylvania; guest faculty at Miami University, FTII, Pune and the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. Two years on, the academy is attracting widespread notice, even as ambitious plans are on the drawing board. “We are negotiating a collaboration with Arcadia University, Philadelphia for a student exchange programme and have signed a partnership with the South Korean College of Fine Arts to develop a new Indian animation idiom. Introducing a range of short-term courses in animation is also on the cards,” says Hariharan.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)