Three Jamia Millia Islamia alumni have been offered membership in the judging panel of Oscar. Nishtha Jain, Shirley Abraham and Amit Mahadesiya, have been nominated in the list of documentary filmmakers. Three of these Indian filmmakers are post graduates from Anwar Jamal Kidwai Mass Communication Research Centre (AJK MCRC).
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS), USA has offered membership to more than 800 film professionals across the globe in order to give itself a wider and more diverse representation in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. The Academy is known around the world for its annual Academy Awards, now officially and popularly known as ‘The Oscars’.
The new invitees, which include a number of Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities, also include a number of Indian film professionals.
Nishtha Jain completed her post-graduation at the AJK MCRC and later specialized in Film Direction at the FTII, Pune. Her filmography includes the City of Photos (2004), Lakshmi and Me (2007), At my Doorstep (2009), Family Album (2011) and Gulabi Gang (2012) which won the National Award for the Best film on Social Issues in 2014.
She has won 25 international and national film awards and has been the recipient of several prestigious fellowships that include the Global Media maker Award (2019) and the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship to teach and research at the University of Texas (Austin) during 2019.
Jain was among six outstanding women documentary filmmakers to receive the Chicken and Egg award 2020 for her film The Golden Thread on the crisis in the jute textile industry. She has just completed her first fiction feature titled Proof (2019).
Shirley Abraham and Amit Mahadesiya graduated from the AJK MCRC in 2006 and collaborated on a series of internationally acclaimed projects. Their debut feature-length documentary Cinema Travelers premiered as an official selection at Cannes Film festival and received a standing ovation.
The film has achieved the rare festival trifecta of Cannes, Toronto, and New York Film Festival and has won 19 awards including the Presidents Gold Medal in India.
Amit Mahedesiya is also a much-acclaimed photographer whose series of 12 photographs titled `Night Screening of Traveling Cinema in India’ received the World Press Photo Award in 2011.
Their documentary Searching for Saraswati (2018) about two villages in the grip of blind faith was commissioned by New York Times Op-Docs. In 2019, Abraham and Mahadesiya made the short and powerful documentary titled The Hour of the Lynching about a case of Muslims being lynched by cow vigilantes. The film can be streamed on The Guardian news website.
After receiving the invite, which would allow her along with the rest of the class of 2020 to vote across categories in the Academy Awards or `Oscars’, Shirley Abraham tweeted: “As an independent filmmaker, I know the value of legitimacy of my voice; of a place at the table. Honored to be invited by @Academy to join as a member A world of work ahead of us and I am so ready.”
