Enterprising Catholic nun connects to youth through filmmaking

By Prasanthi Mandapati

A Catholic nun dwelling in the western Indian town of Mumbai, Sister Josefina Albuquerque, has taken the initiative to dive into the film industry with a cinematic endeavour aimed at the youth of currently.

Her masterpiece has been made manifest in a short, but impressive 7-moment fiction movie created on a cellular phone, in just two times.

Sister Josefina belongs to the Spiritual of Jesus and Mary Congregation. She is a instructor and is now the headmistress of St. Agnes Higher University in Byculla, Mumbai. In addition to getting an educator, she experienced a passion for filmmaking. She lacked writing talents, but thrived in cinematography.

The Covid-19 lockdown furnished her with an prospect to master some of the abilities required for filmmaking and editing.

When she visited the tribal persons who lived in the Aarey forest, Sr. Josefina was intrigued by their life style. Her expertise spurred her to shoot the documentary, entitled “Under the Banyan Tree: A Path to Self-Discovery.” The film recounts the everyday living of an engineer who gave up financial comforts to dwell in Mumbai’s Aarey forest and teach folks to obtain their legitimate calling by standing up for their legal rights.

Sr. Josefina acquired accolades for her cinematography skills when she generated a documentary illustrating the existence of a tribal in Aarey forest.

“As another person in cost of youth ministry in my spiritual local community, I noticed that our youth devote most of their time on social media. I believed I would only achieve them by fortifying oneself with media and electronic experiments. That’s the minute I made the decision that I required to enroll in a specialist filmmaking program,” reported Sr. Josefina, in an job interview with Vatican News.

At the moment, in addition to serving as a school principal, she has enrolled in the Professional Filmmaking Study course at St. Paul’s Interaction Centre in Bandra, Mumbai. She felt impressed to build a movie on the life of small children as a aspect of the course in qualified filmmaking.

Sr. Josefina documented “D for Dumbo” on a limited finances at St. John the Evangelist Faculty in Marol, Andheri, Mumbai. It follows the narrative of Sam, a fourth-grade university student who gets derided since he is unable to recount maths tables as swiftly as his classmates. Even so, the boy – dubbed the course dumbo – outperforms his classmates when a different teacher assigns them a resourceful undertaking.

The film acquired the ideal award from St. Paul’s Institute in Bandra, Mumbai. Sr. Josefina been given the award from Naseeruddin Shah, a nicely-known Bollywood actor. The movie is at this time en route to the online ALP Global Film Pageant.

According to Sr. Josefina, the film was carried out with confined resources and its subject matter “resonates with everyone on some stage. It was a good surprise for me when Naseeruddin Shah highlighted my title and claimed he discovered with the protagonist during the convocation.”

She described the award as “recognition and confirmation of my belief that, as a result of integrating my enthusiasm for filmmaking and education, I’m confident that I can access a larger audience.”

In accordance to Sr. Josefina, “Jesus used the parable for interaction with the persons of the time He lived. In modern context, I believe that movies are one of the most effective indicates for spreading God’s Word to the entire world.”

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, in accordance to a Chinese indicating. And that maxim has turn into particularly true in the story of Sr. Josefina as she renders her very first foray into the entire world of movie.