WELCOME TO ROOPKALA KENDRO

Roopkala Kendro, an Institute of Film and Social Communication in the Information and Cultural Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal has been formed out of an Indo-Italian technical cooperation in 1995. The initial idea for an institute of this nature was first conceived by the film maestro Satyajit Ray in 1989 to produce educational audiovisuals for addressing socio-economic challenges faced by the poor, marginalized and socially excluded sections of population. Formally handed over to the Government of West Bengal in November 2001, Roopkala Kendro is located in Sector V of Salt Lake City.

The two main pillars of the Institute are the Training Wing and the Production Wing. Roopkala Kendro offers a 2 year Post Graduate Diploma in 5 streams of Development Communication, Direction, Motion Picture Photography, Editing and Animation Creation

The uniqueness of the course is that students are trained through a learning by-doing method and there is immense scope for hands-on skills building.

Kendro's mandate of addressing challenges and concerns faced by marginalized, vulnerable and disadvantages sections of the population forms the focus of all production related activities. This wing has manifold purpose; it conducts participatory communication research, develop and designs communication strategies, designs social campaigns, plans and produces campaign outputs - print, audio and video materials. On the one hand, the focus is on design multiple media oriented campaign using innovative, need-based and popular medium from folk songs, puppets, flex-on-wheels, street drama to broadcasting participatory audio programmes and jingles, television spots and video films.

Kendro uses both Broadcast and Narrowcast means to reach out to its diverse audience. Often the need to develop these materials meets different and varying purposes, like awareness generation and mobilization of community, training and sensitization or orientation of government functionaries, multilateral agencies or civil society, or reporting and documentation for different agencies including fundraising and donor information dissemination.

Roopkala Kendro has a well-equipped Library having a huge collection of technical as well as non-technical books on films and related subjects, Social Communication, and Animation. It also has an enormous collection of Bengali fiction and non-fiction books. The Library has a collection of rare books, journals, scripts of Satyajit Ray, Tarun Majumder etc. Last but not the least, it also has a number of Indian and foreign journals and magazines in its collection. The library can boast of a collection of numerous DVDs, VCDs and CDs of films including animation and documentaries from India and various parts of the world.

Members of Executive Council of Roopkala Kendro

1. Secretary, Department of Information & Cultural Affairs, Government of West Bengal
2. Sri Goutam Ghose
3. Sri Kaushik Ganguly
4. Additional Chief Secretary, Finance Department, Government of West Bengal or his authorised representative.
5. Financial Advisor, Department of Information & Cultural Affairs
6. Director of Films, Department of Information & Cultural Affairs
7. Chief Executive Officer, Nandan
8. Managing Director, West Bengal Film Development Corporation Ltd.
9. Director & Chief Executive Officer, Roopkala Kendro