Webtalkies Jury

Presenting the jury for Webtalkies 09 - an online short film festival on Nautanki.tv :

Paromita Vohra - Writer and Filmmaker

Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer whose work plays with fiction and non-fiction to focus on ideas of gender, urban life and popular culture.

Her films as director include the documentaries Morality TV aur Loving Jehad: Ek Manohar Kahani (Best Short Doc International Video Festival of Kerala 2008), Q2P (Best Documentary, IFFLA and Best Documentary, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 2007), Where’s Sandra?, Work In Progress: At the WSF, Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City, Unlimited Girls (Women’s News Award, Women’s Film Festival in Seoul; Best Documentary, Aaina Film Festival), A Woman’s Place, A Short Film About Time and Annapurna: Goddess of Food.

She is the writer of the feature Khamosh Pani ( Silent Waters), about a woman whose life is transformed by growing fundamentalism in a Pakistani village (Dir: Sabiha Sumar) which won the Best Screenplay Award at the KARA Film Festival and the Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival. She has also written the documentaries A Few Things I Know About Her (Silver Conch,MIFF 2002, National Award for Best Documentary) , If You Pause and Skin Deep.

She writes extensively for print, both fiction and non-fiction, teaches scriptwriting as visiting faculty at various universities and has done considerable work with young people with a focus on radio. She is currently working on a non-fiction book.

Niraj Voralia – Film Editor

Niraj is an FTII graduate and has edited a number of feature films which include Shwaas (Dir: Sandeep Sawant) which was nominated as India’s entry for the Oscars, Valu (Dir: Umesh Kulkarni), a children’s film Dahavi F (Dir: Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar), and Vastupurush which received the National award for Best Marathi Film in 2003.

He is also a visiting faculty at the Social Communications Media course at Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai where he teaches and has helped the students with his editing expertise in their filmmaking projects.

Mahesh Aney - Cinematographer

In 1974, he chanced upon Herzog’s Aguirre : The Wrath of God and became a convert. He had planned to pursue a management degree. He joined film school instead.

Today, Mahesh Aney is a National Film Award winning cinematographer. An FTII Pune graduate with specialization in cinematography he has shot for more than a thousand commercials with leading directors like Prahlad Kakkar, Mukul Anand, Ram Madhvani, Prasoon Pandey, Ashutosh Gowarikar and many others. His commercials include award-winning films for Pepsi, Kellogg's, Tata Steel, Feviquik and Maggie among others. He has also cinematographed two international music videos for Deep Forest and Mirage.

Mahesh has also conceptualized and directed extremely popular television shows like Movers & Shakers, Bindaas Bol, Kya Masti Kya Dhoom, Saturday Suspense and Wajood, which have won several awards.

In 2004, he shot Swades, for which he won the National Award for Best Cinematographer.

Currently he is shooting an English film for BAFTA nominated director Suri Krishnamma called Good Sharma.

Amole Gupte - Creative Director

Amole Gupte is the originator, writer and creative director of Taare Zameen Par; a film that stirred the entire world and nation and that enthused a spectacular social change in the parent-child relationship with its message being, ‘every child is special’. He has acted in more than 110 student films of FTII, Pune and now stars in Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey as one of the chief protagonists’. “Chor Bazaar” - His book, amalgamated with his sketches will release with his next film, Sapnon Ko Gintey Gintey, which is in the pre-production stage. He has been the visiting faculty at esteemed film-making & media institutes like FTII, Whistling Woods International and MET.