Latest news with #Thampu
New Indian Express
26-05-2025
- General
- New Indian Express
Karthumbi umbrella project battles fund crunch amid soaring demand in Attappadi
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Held back by a lack of funds and delayed government support, the Karthumbi Umbrella Project in Attappadi is struggling to keep up with the rising demand. Launched in 2014 by the tribal welfare group Thampu, the initiative has become a lifeline for tribal women in one of the state's most marginalised regions. 'We've made around 12,000 umbrellas this year so far,' says Rajendra Prasad, coordinator at Thampu. 'Once schools reopen, the number could rise to 20,000-22,000,' he said. The project began with a goal to offer sustainable employment to tribal women who had little to no access to economic independence. Currently, 30 women across 13 tribal hamlets are actively making three-fold and walking stick umbrellas at home, taking raw materials from a central store and stitching them during their free time. 'One experienced woman can make up to 15-20 umbrellas a day. It takes about 20 minutes to make one. If she finishes 20, she earns Rs 600,' said Prasad. These numbers could be much higher. But what is stopping them? A lack of consistent support. 'We've trained 250 women but due to a fund crisis, we can't offer jobs to everyone. The tribal department has not given the promised funds for the past three years. That's holding us back,' said Prasad. The gap between potential and capacity is stark. The team received around 25,000 enquiries this year from across the country, but couldn't fulfil most of them due to the shortage of working capital. Sourcing raw materials is another hurdle. 'All the materials come from Bombay,' says Prasad, listing out the eight essential components-nylon cloth, tube frame, chanduwa, handle, top washer, kangri, inner ferrule and covers. The total production cost comes to Rs 290-300 per umbrella, including labour, transport and packing. They sell it for Rs 350 in bulk, while it retails at `460 in shops. 'Some of the women used their income to buy two-wheelers, some built houses,' he said. But the profit margins have shrunk over time. 'Initially, women got `75 per umbrella. Now it is Rs 30 because the cost of materials has gone up,' the coordinator added. The project's turning point came in 2023 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned Karthumbi in his 'Mann Ki Baat' address. 'That gave us national visibility. We started getting calls from outside Kerala. One of the biggest orders came from Bank of Baroda, which bought 10,000 umbrellas at `350 each. But this year, though they contacted us, we have not been able to confirm the order,' Prasad said.
The Hindu
18-05-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
Thampu trains tribal youth to become health ambassadors
The tribal youth of Attappady underwent a three-day leadership training under the banner of a tribal initiative called Thampu last week. They were given training to become health ambassadors of Attappady. Known as the Karthumbi youth group, a brand developed by the Thampu, the youngsters were selected from various tribal hamlets spread across the hilly regions of Attappady. 'We offered them training to understand and address various issues like malnutrition, health and empowerment in their communities,' said Thampu president Rajendra Prasad. Fifty youngsters from different tribal settlements took part in the training workshop. 'The objective of Thamp was to empower the tribal youth to become health ambassadors who can work at the grassroots level and find solutions to their health issues,' said Mr. Prasad. Office-bearers of the Karthumbi group from different settlements jointly inaugurated the training camp by taking a health and nutrition pledge. Mr. Prasad presided over the function. Child rights activist and former UNICEF consultant Manish Sreekaryam delivered the keynote address. Thampu project coordinator Binil Kumar T., convener K.A. Ramu, poet R.K. Ramesh, taluk health supervisor Tom, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) representatives Sujaya and Subaira spoke on different subjects. Social work students of Sri Shankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, supported the camp.
Time of India
04-05-2025
- Health
- Time of India
Campaign to fight anaemia in tribal population launched
Kochi: As part of raising awareness in local villages, a tribal NGO, Thampu, launched a year-long campaign, ' Tribal Youth Against Anaemia ', to reach across 30 selected tribal hamlets. Combating anaemia in the tribal population was a challenge faced by administrators and local groups alike in Attappady. A one-day workshop was held as part of the first phase at the Bhoothuvazhi Moopen Villa for kids on Saturday. More than 75 children from the tribal villages participated in the workshop, which was inaugurated by Rajendra Prasad, president of Thampu. Former UNICEF consultant Manish Srikaryam spoke on child rights and adolescence, while Attappadi taluk adolescent counsellor Ayana Joy gave a talk on 'Nutrition Education and Remedies'. Binil Kumar S spoke on adolescence and skill development. A residential camp will be held for three days in the third week of May. Karthumbi Kutti groups that were inactive for a few years will be restarted in 20 selected villages, Prasad said. Leaders chosen from the groups will participate in the summer residential camp. tnn
Hindustan Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Shaji N Karun: A life lived illuminating Indian cinema
Shaji N Karun began his career in the '70s as a cinematographer trained at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. He would go on to become India's most-awarded filmmaker, a virtuoso cameraman, visionary film czar, film festival innovator and pioneer in inclusiveness in cinema in the country. As a rookie cameraman, Karun quickly earned the respect of Indian film industry heavyweights with his works in Mumbai and back home in Kerala. "Listen to what that young man says," Hema Malini would tell her directors on the set in Mumbai when the inexperienced FTII graduate used to cause a stir with his strange suggestions on lighting. Born on January 1, 1952 in the port town of Kollam in southern Kerala, the celebrated Malayalam filmmaker was a magician in imagining the effect of lighting on people and objects on the movie set. Karun's camera magically transformed a torpid earth on the banks of Kerala's famous river Bharathapuzha in Malappuram for the black and white film, Thampu (1978), directed by G Aravindan. Karun's remarkable work with Aravindan in such formidable films as Kanchana Sita, Kummatty and Esthappan in the late '70s and with director K G George in Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback and Panchavadi Palam in the early '80s announced the arrival of Malayalam cinema as an artistic and aesthetic force in the global film industry along with the works of such filmmakers as John Abraham and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. "Shaji explained to us about the lighting scheme and composition of the stunning black and white imagery of Thampu when we decided to restore the film that was lying in tatters," says Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, whose Film Heritage Foundation was behind the restoration of the film, which was screened in the Cannes Classics section in 2022. "He said the film had been shot on Indu stock, which was an indigenous film stock manufactured in India," adds Dungarpur. Piravi, Karun's directorial debut in 1988 based on the police excesses in Kerala during the Emergency from 1975 to 1977, reflects his sharp focus on creating images with the lack of light. Piravi, an official selection at the 1989 Cannes film festival where it won a Camera d'Or Special Mention for the first film of a director, exposed the mind-numbing human tragedy of the Emergency through the film shot almost entirely in pouring rains to exacerbate the reality. When Swaham, his sophomore feature had its world premiere, again in Cannes in 1994, "Shaji chose to wear a dhoti and shirt to walk the red carpet", recollects Malti Sahai, the then-director of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI). The last Indian film in Cannes competition for the prestigious Palme d'Or, before Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light in 2024 broke Indian cinema's jinx in the French Riviera, Swaham also revealed Karun's simplicity and determination to reach the highest levels against all odds. After Swaham finished its final touches at the National Film Development Corporation lab in Mumbai, Karun and his friend Sukhwand Singh Dadha from FTII lugged a heavy steel box containing its reels to the Mumbai customs office in Santa Cruz for transfer to Cannes. A friend in Thiruvananthapuram booked Karun's flight ticket to the festival and he stayed in a tiny room of a budget hotel in Cannes waiting for the world premiere. At the festival, he spent his time speaking with other filmmakers from Asia vying for the Palme d'Or, like Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. When Kapadia broke his record for the last Indian film in Cannes competition last year, Karun was among the first to congratulate the Mumbai-born filmmaker, a fellow FTII graduate. His praise acknowledging Kapadia's higher standards of cinematic philosophy, giving her a rare sense of aesthetics and visual language, was notable for its emphasis on lighting. "Payal has the rare ability to recognise the disappearing light and sound in front of her to make cinema enlightening," Karun said. "Payal's gender interpretations in her works allow them to stand out in Indian cinema," he added. Karun won many National Film Awards, beginning with Piravi, adjudged the Best Film in 1988. Karun also won the Best Director prize for the film. His Vanaprastham, a fierce critique of caste politics in the art, won the National Award for Best Film in 1999 and he won it again for Kutty Srank ten years later. Karun directed seven films, his last, Olu, a stunning underwater fantasy, coming seven years ago. Realising his extraordinary understanding of cinema's power, Karun was someone the central government turned to for leadership when it set up committees for promoting Indian cinema. He was often asked to chair the technical committee of IFFI, the showcase of Indian cinema and its talent. He never refused and would bring the best projectors from Belgium to complement the high quality of Indian productions. When the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), the most popular film festival in the country, took shape in 1994, it was Karun who led its festival management. After the Hema Committee report on sexual harassment in Malayalam film industry rocked the state last year, Karun came to rescue of IFFK in December 2024 as the Chairman of Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC), honouring female actors in Malayalam cinema from the '60s and '70s and creating an edition centred on women professionals in the industry. When the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Front government in Kerala appointed him as KSFDC Chairman in 2019, Karun decided to do something never attempted in the country before. He worked with the government to produce five first feature films of women directors. It was the first time a state government had initiated affirmative action in the Indian film industry and the first state-funded inclusion initiative anywhere in the world. "There is an immediate connection between violence against women and lack of opportunities," French producer Sandrine Brauer, co-founder of Paris-based Collective 50/50 of film and television professionals worldwide that promotes gender equality in the audio-visual industry, then said welcoming the move. Karun followed up the funding for women directors with production funds for filmmakers from backward communities, including from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe. So far, KSFDC has produced ten films under its affirmative action initiative. To help first-time filmmakers find exhibition opportunities for their movies, Karun built and upgraded cinemas owned by the government in Kerala. "There are nine state-owned movie halls having 17 screens today in Kerala," says Vidya G of KSFDC. "After he (Karun) was diagnosed with liver cancer in January last year, he would come to the office straight from his hospital sessions," she adds. "He was in his office even last week." Karun is survived by his wife Anasuya Warrier, a philanthropist, and their two sons.
Indian Express
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Opinion A boat in the mist: The quiet eloquence of Shaji N Karun's films
Some filmmakers tell stories. Some chase moments. And then there was Shaji N Karun, who listened to the world breathe, and shaped cinema out of that deep silence. You didn't watch Karun's movies the way you watch most Malayalam movies. You lived inside it, like walking through a memory you couldn't quite name. A father endlessly looking for his son. A Kathakali artist slipping between roles and realities. A mother holding on to the air because there's nothing else left to hold. In his movies, time slowed down. For Karun, cinema was never about commanding attention. It was about tending to absences: What remains unsaid, what remains unseen. His characters didn't just perform their emotions; they bore them, carrying them like secret injuries. And in doing so, they let us glimpse something raw and rare: The texture of endurance itself. Before he became a director, Karun was one of Indian cinema's finest cinematographers. He learned early that sometimes a shaft of light across a wooden floor could say more than a hundred lines of dialogue. Working alongside masters like G Aravindan and M T Vasudevan Nair in films like Thampu, Kummatty and Manju, he found a way of looking at the world that was both tender and unflinching. In his lens, rivers, mist, sea and human faces didn't just decorate the story. They became the story. Each shot felt composed with the patience of an oil painting, where a scene was not just captured, but contemplated. He used the camera like a patient hand tracing the textures of a world already full of stories. Light, colour, and silence were not accessories in his films. Sometimes a still glance, a waiting corridor, or the hush before a ritual had the whole weight of the themes handled. By the time he made his own films, the instinct to find emotion inside the image had deepened into something unmistakably his own. His movies were meditations on loss, longing, and the brittle dignity of survival. In an industry where loudness often passes for emotion, Shaji N Karun gave us something infinitely harder to capture: A cinema of listening. Shaped by forces deeper than plot, Karun's movies become elemental. Loss, exile and the ache of unrealised dreams aren't just themes. They're the water his characters swim in. Piravi (1988), for instance, begins with a father, played by Premji, searching for his missing son. But what lingers isn't just the search. It is the way hope itself begins to decay, quietly, like fruit left out too long. In Swaham (1994), a mother fights against the indifference of the world with nothing but the stubbornness of her own love. Vanaprastham (1999) collapses the distance between art and life, mask and man, until everything becomes unbearable and beautiful at once. It also captures the core of Mohanlal's flexibility, bringing out one of Indian cinema's most intense performances. And Kutty Srank (2009) blends the mythic storytelling with a distinctly local sensibility, the rugged landscapes of the sea and forest becoming extensions of Mammootty 's title character. There is always a performance at the heart of his films, from the characters themselves, struggling to hold together some dignity in a world that threatens to unmake them. Grief in these films is not loud. It settles, heavy and wordless, across your chest, because Karun offered something very few filmmakers dare to: A mirror to our wounded selves. It is tempting to place Karun neatly alongside the other giants of Malayalam parallel cinema — Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan and John Abraham. But he arrived when their art had already opened the door. He walked through it carrying grief, separation and silence and a camera that knew how to wait. Where Adoor examined social structures and Aravindan conjured riddles, Karun stayed with something more fragile: The emotional residue of living. This sensibility gave him a global voice. Piravi earned him a Caméra d'Or mention at Cannes. Swaham was in the running for the Palme d'Or. Vanaprastham was selected in the Un Certain Regard section. But even as the world recognised him, Karun never became part of the noise. He stayed close to the ground, close to Kerala's soil, to its myths and music, its silences and losses. His films feel like they're happening somewhere close by, just beyond the next door. This isn't a curtain call. Karun's cinema was never meant to conclude, only to echo. His frames will stay alive in the quiet corners of our minds, like embers that never quite die out. Somewhere, a boat still drifts through mist. Somewhere, a silence still holds a story. And years from now, someone will definitely stumble upon one of his films and feel, without knowing why, a lump in their throat.
