DES announces film institute

The Deccan Education Society (DES) has decided to launch the DES’ Institute of Film & Television (IFT) from this academic year.
Students can get admission by clearing a professionally-designed media aptitude test (MAT), DES vice-chairman Vikas Kakatkar said at a press conference on Saturday.

Kakatkar said, “We will give practical training to students rather than classroom, besides providing technical and administrative knowledge. We will take 30-student batch for this academic year and would have experienced faculty.”

The DES’ IFT institute will be started at Chiplunkar Bhavan, LB Shastri Road in Navi Peth and Rs80,000 admission fee will be taken from students.

The institute will offer four postgraduate diplomas of one-year duration each in television production, broadcast journalism, TV channel management and television technology.

Following the completion of 125 years in October 2009, DES had taken up various projects to mark the occasion. While many of them are on the verge of completion, the remaining will be implemented by the end of this year.

Moreover, the society will be coming up with a centre for advanced studies on the Fergusson College (FC) campus. It will be a joint venture between DES and Glasgow Caladonian University, Scotland, UK. Under this programme, food bioscience and clinical microbiology will be introduced from this
academic year.

Speaking about the courses, DES chairman Anil Patwardhan said, “It will be conducted in three phases. After completion of each phase, students would get certificate. Excellent students would be sent to Scotland for the second phase at subsidised rate.”

The DES is also planning to spread its wings outside Maharashtra. “The construction work of the Fergusson Centre for Higher Studies near Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh) will commence in a short while and the society is looking forward to start courses in microbiology, biotechnology and biochemistry from the academic year 2012-13,” Kakatkar said, adding that the work will be done in three phases and will be completed by June 2012. “A total amount of Rs5 crore will be spent on this project,” he said.