At Monsoon Grey, we believe that any and all of us can become designers. To this end we have crafted design courses which will make you see and do like never before and we have visualised exercises which will free your mind – all this in an atmosphere which is highly energetic and interactive.

A wide range of possibilities exists in the form of courses, workshops and seminars in the areas of art, film and graphic design. The courses are designed to suit the requirements of the participants in terms of both duration and content, whether it is a six-month long documentary filmmaking course or a weekend workshop on poster design or music videos.

Monsoon Grey currently offers courses on film appreciation and visual literacy, and workshops on digital storytelling, filmmaking and photography. An art history club is already underway and a film study group is on the anvil.

A course that focuses on the elements of film and how they operate in ultimately delivering an audiovisual experience. The course is introductory in character (it is structured so in both form and time) and presupposes advanced courses in order to study each element in its entirety.

To achieve the primary objective of audiovisual literacy, the participants will be exposed to a blitzkrieg of film snippets from all over the world, of every category (feature, documentary, short…), of every genre (thriller, drama, comedy…) and of every type (art house, popular, independent…).

The course is not about the history of cinema, nor about film theories (formal, sociological, political, psychoanalytical, etc.), nor about genres in particular. This is not to say that these aspects won’t be considered. They will be touched upon and even elaborated if necessary but only in passing. The emphasis of this course will be on pinpointing the technical and artistic elements of film and their orchestration.

• Focus on contemporary cinema and media.
• Not theoretical and does not dwell on history or rely heavily on ‘classics’ as illustrations.
• It looks at the artistic and the technical aspects of the medium as an integral whole.

We live in a world full of visuals, yet or perhaps because of the proliferation of the visual, because of its excess, we tend to be less appreciative of design. Our sight has become lazy, jaded even: we tend not to stand in front of an artwork, denying the attention and dialoguing it deserves. Since our schooling deals with art only cursorily, the series of exercises at Picture This are meant to reverse this neglect.

The course is based on the assumption that the eye can and must be trained. What makes an artwork pleasing or disturbing is something we can understand only if we take the time to respond and engage with it.

Picture This is structured as a series of eight sessions, each session a slide show, exposing you to artworks from all over the world, past and present. However, art history is not our pursuit but learning to get pleasure from art is. So even if you just delight in a riot of lines, shapes, colours and tones, you too would get pleasure from these sessions. Participants are encouraged to share in the session enriching themselves and the session through articulating their visual sensibilities.

Any person above 18 years of age, who is interested in the visual, is welcome. However for those who rely more on the visual medium such as photographers, designers or professional artists, Picture This may be of considerably more significance.

Film, the fundamental medium of our times, has the power to inform and transform in a way no other medium can. Films show us what it's like to be human. They help us view the world and identify with places and issues we might otherwise be unaware of.

Global issues of war, human rights, global warming etc. can be hard for young people to connect with. Important social problems can be addressed and examined through film as it speaks not only to a student’s mind and intellect but also to their heart. It allows them to enter an unknown and perhaps distant world, relate to the global issue and experience its heartaches and conflicts in a very personal way, enabling in them a deeper understanding of its local repercussions.

Though the list below is not comprehensive (as we keep adding to our repository of films), some of the issues that can be discussed through film are:

Digital Storytelling is the art of turning a personal narrative into a multimedia experience. It can combine music, video and/or still images with your creative voice. The results are an original production that engages the viewing audience in ways that are often surprising and powerful.

Digital stories derive their power through weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid colour to characters, situations, and insights. Digital Storytelling lies at the intersection of the ancient art of storytelling and the power of modern technology.

Participants will work intensely with facilitators learning how to use simple user-friendly software to make digital stories. This is a hands-on, minds-on experiential exercise where the process is itself part of the product. It initiates participants into a new media literacy and media fluency – going beyond mere text.

“I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.’ - Chinese proverb

The Frameworks workshop is about making films or documentaries of short duration. The focus will be on teaching the art of filmmaking and producing new knowledge through the visual medium.

It will provide the participants with perspectives which will enable them to critically analyse and reflect on the media surrounding them; it will facilitate a student to acquire a film-making sensibility where a premium will be put on the process. It will include exercises in scripting, visualizing, storyboarding, cinematography, editing, and assimilating the knowledge of all these into one composite product.

The workshop aims to help participants move from being passive consumers of visual knowledge to creative producers of moving images. At the end of the workshop, the participants may also develop an employable skill and perhaps gain individual fulfilment in the process. Though the workshop will help anyone interested in making films, it may be especially useful to students of mass media.

The workshop is open to anyone above the age of 18 years and from any background.

Zeigeist is a membership based Art History Club that meets regularly to explore art and visual culture in its various forms through lectures and discussion on a wide range of topics such as artists, movement, period, school and theme to state a few.

Each session will have members coming together to celebrate art in an informal atmosphere. Slideshows will accompany the one hour lecture, followed by a discussion.

The club will be open to anyone above the age of 16 years and from any background.

Temenos is a membership based film study group that meets regularly to view a diverse set of films - foreign, classic, experimental and independent works, presented in a thematic series or as special retrospectives in order to study and appreciate the art of the moving image.

Members will come together in an informal space to discuss and explore in depth anything to do with the moving image: it could be the role of light in Guru Dutt’s films, the symbolism in Ingmar Bergman’s films, the hero’s journey undertaken by protagonists in mainstream Indian cinema or perhaps archetypal and Jungian analyses.

The film study circle will be open to anyone above the age of 18 years and from any background.