Children of cinema

Updated on: 22 February,2009 06:23 AM IST |
Ayesha Nair |

AT THE screening of Vinod Ganatra's film Heda Hoda

AT THE screening of Vinod Ganatra's film Heda Hoda (the story of a boy who crosses the India-Pakistan border at the Rann of Kutch in order to get his camels back) organised by the Mohile Parikh Centre and WorldKids Foundation, the director was surrounded by children from various NGOs with a whole bunch of queries "what does the title mean?" ("here and there"), "is the border really not fenced ("yes, half a pillar is in India and the other half is in Pakistan").

Ganatra said that he preferred working with children and animals to 'big stars' as the former have no starry tantrums.

While narrating an incident at the screening of the film in Berlin, his eyes moisten. "An eight-year-old girl said that she was upset with the film because I showed the characters drinking water from the palm of their hand.
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I explained that that's how we do it here and she should try it, it's better drinking water that way. A few minutes later she came back and in front of an audience of 1,200 stern Germans, admitted that she had tried drinking water like it was shown in the film, at the water tap on the floor above and it was indeed better!"u00a0u00a0