“I ask my students to do anything else — plumbing, carpentry — anything, if they can, instead of coming to my school,” says Kurt Inderbitzin, CEO of the International School of Film and Media. Kurt is the former director of Subhash Ghai’s ‘Whistling Woods’ and is now associated with Nagarjuna’s film institute.
Kurt does not beat about the bush painting a fancy picture of the industry and comes to the point, “It’s a very difficult industry to crack and I aim at preparing my students to face the challenges and equip them with the right knowledge.
This country is filled with talent just waiting to be explored. Most of the actors in the US or UK undergo years of training in acting schools. There are hundreds of acting schools there but we have hardly any in this country. The movie industry on the whole requires well-trained technicians and artistes.”
Movies and books have described the movie industry as not being as glossy as it appears. What we see is a picture that has been redone to present a rosy image. However, the real picture lies beneath layers of makeup.
We asked Inderbitzin if he prepared his students to face situations akin to the infamous casting couch and he smiles and says, “It’s like preparing a girl for rape. I must say that there are all sorts of people in every industry and fortunately or unfortunately, the cases in the movie industry get the maximum publicity.”
When asked to comment on acting, “Someone had once said that acting is an art, you either have it in you or you don’t.”
Inderbitzin replies, “Well, some amount of training and exposure is required for a fresher to understand the nuances of acting and we provide them with that.”
Perhaps that’s the reason why he is glad that some of the biggest names in the industry were more than happy to share their experience.
Apart from Nagarjuna himself, the institute has roped in stars like Kamal Haasan, Anushka Shetty and Prakash Raj. “The actors share their weak points with the students and enrich them with their experience.
Nagarjuna is the finest person and actor that I have ever met. He has done many period films in the past, and in one of the sessions he revealed that he always had trouble getting a grasp of the dialect of that era right. He worked for hours to achieve perfection during dubbing. Now I tell my students, if a star like him works so hard — they have to work double.”
