Curtin Sarawak Open Day to feature talk for aspiring filmmakers

Miri – 27 September 2016 – Among the highlights at the upcoming Open Day of Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak) on 8 October 2016 will be an industry talk by award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of the Far East Documentary Centre Indrani Kopal.

Hosted by the university’s Faculty of Humanities, the talk will be held in the LTBS 11 lecture theatre at the Faculty of Business (Heron 2) from 1 pm to 3pm.

Indrani will talk about her experiences as a documentary maker and how to tell compelling stories about real people and contemporary issues in documentaries, as well as how she gets inspiration for her works.

Indrani has more than a decade of experience in the film industry, which has seen her bagging numerous national and international awards for her intriguing productions highlighting contemporary issues by capturing the everyday lives of her subjects.

Her award-winning documentaries include the much-acclaimed and captivating 17-minute-long ‘The Game Changer’ which features the contribution of a dancer to the ‘Rehabilitation through the Arts’ programme at the Woodburne Correctional Facility in New York.

The documentary won her the covetous Best Student Documentary Award at the 2015 American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2014, it was also named the Best Short Documentary at the 2nd Annual Northeast Film Festival and Harlem International Film Festival. It has also been accepted into 10 other film festivals in the United States, with the latest being the Windrider International Student Film Festival 2016.

While making a splash in the international film arena, Indrani is no stranger to the local film scene. She was named one of Women’s Weekly Malaysia’s ‘Great Women of Our Time’ for arts and media.

Her passion and commitment to social issues in the country and her 15-minute long documentary ‘She’s My Son’, which touches on the highly sensitive issue of transgender in Malaysia, won her the Justin Louis Award at the 2007 FreedomFilmFest, a local film festival dedicated to the promotion of human rights education through creative means.

Indrani began her career as a television producer while completing her Bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Communication at Open University Malaysia. She went on to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Studies and Production at Hofstra University in New York on a Fullbright Scholarship in 2012.

She is currently working on a documentary entitled ‘Teacher, The Tradition Bearer’ for Tanjai Kamalaa Indiara Dance School, which is due for release soon.

For more information on the talk, contact Tharshni Kumaramasamy at 085-443939 ext. 5069 or email her at tharshni@curtin.edu.my.

Documentary filmmaker Indrani Kopal to give talk during Curtin Sarawak Open Day