Healer heart  How much can a man love his fellow human being? How much would a man thrive to selflessly assist even a stranger to heal him from the psychological issues tormenting him? We understand that psychologists have successfully evolved ‘Hope scales’, ‘IQ scales’, ‘EQ scales’ and numerous other psychometric devices, questionnaires, etc to measure human traits, behaviour, perception, situation specific reaction, etc. We wish there were at least one psychometric scale to measure ‘sincere empathy’ to understand how empathic a person can be. But then, talking to psychotherapist Prodyot Pran Saikia in itself is enough to understand the meaning and nature of ‘genuine sincere empathy’. He is a healer. We had the honour and privilege in participating in two of his day-long workshops; one on ‘inner child’ and the other a student specific workshop on ‘Becoming a positive student’. Both the workshops were healing and learning experience for us. The ‘inner child’ workshop helped us identify, name and understand our emotions and then aided us to address some of our long-standing unresolved emotional issues. People candidly confessed before him about the beneficial effects of his inputs in the workshops on them. Saikia, himself a columnist in the Horizon on psychological issues, told us the other day that he has received a number of e-mails and smses from people, some from abroad, telling him how his articles have helped them address their dormant and harmful psychological traits. Let’s hope Saikia succeeds in his endeavour to heal those with unseen pains galore.

Deft docus  It’s heartening that a global documentary expert has praised Indian documentaries and hoped that US entities would fund more co-productions in the coming days. “Slowly but surely, documentaries from India and on Indian issues are capturing the attention of global audiences in the international film festivals,” said US documentary specialist Sandra J Ruch while addressing the media at the end of a day-long students workshop on non-fiction film making at the NSHM Institute of Media & Communication (NIMC), Kolkata recently. Ruch, who served as the executive director of International Documentary Association (IDA), said more and more documentary filmmakers are being drawn to Indian issues and themes. “US organizations like Sundance Documentary Fund, ITVS International, Ford Foundation, Cinereach and others are coming forward with funding options to encourage co-production of documentary films in areas like human rights, social justice and other global issues,” said Ruch, who has been part of juries and expert panels at film festivals and conferences around the world. She also lauded the high technical quality and presentation style of some of the documentaries made by the NIMC students. “I am glad that the excellent infrastructure and right guidance have imparted the correct learning techniques to the NIMC students. I was amazed by some of the documentaries made by the students. I would give them ten out of ten for their story idea, technique and presentation,” she said. “NIMC has invested in infrastructure and other facilities in a big way to provide the best to the students who have taken up documentary projects on various social themes,” said NIMC principal Mrityunjoy Chatterjee. “For the past three years, NIMC has been bringing in global experts to give the students international exposure and grooming in media and communication,” he added. Ruch was in India to share her expertise, experience on non-fiction filmmaking and popularize public appreciation of documentary films. Los Angeles-based IDA is a non-profit organization founded in 1982 to promote documentary film, video and new media. It has approximately 2,800 members in 53 countries, and gives experienced and novice directors equal footage to showcase their works at the world’s top venues and film festivals.

Simanta / Mridumoloy