Mumbai: Saregama India has affirmed its intentions of entering the feature film space by partnering teh British Council for 'The India Screenwriting Workshop' to be held in Goa in March.

The workshop aims to develop and improve the quality of script writing in India, by honing the skills of budding script writers in the country. The workshop will be held in Goa from 17 to 23 March, with mentoring from industry experts.
Saregama's interest in the workshop, according to a release, stems form its plans to invest in the cinema space in India. With a vision to attract and develop more talent for the industry, Saregama's workshop will enable the participants to interact in group and individual sessions with screenwriters of International repertoire, with the aim of developing their own screenplays.

At the end of the workshop, a seed grant will be awarded to writers whose stories show the best potential for development into a quality screenplay.

The application forms for this workshop and competition are available on Saregama and British Council website. The participants have to fill in the entries along with their story for a film of 2 - 5 ages and screenplay of a few scenes, 10 - 20 pages. This workshop will be held at The International Centre, Goa. The principal mentors for this workshop will be Sabrina Dhawan, writer of Monsoon Wedding and associate professor in screenwriting at the Tisch School of Arts and Paromita Vohra, writer of Khamosh Pani and visiting faculty for scriptwriting at Sophiya College.

The proposed guests' mentors include Shekhar Kapoor, Vishal Bharadwaj, Abbas Tyrewala, John Newbigin, Ian Iqbal Rashid and B R Sharan, Creative Director, Saregama India Ltd. The applications should reach British Council latest by February 11, 2008.

Says Sharan, "There is immense of talent in our country. The objective of the workshop is to give insights on the skills of scripting, screenplay. The grant that will be given to the best script at the end of the workshop and that will be a support to the writers to complete the script in the stipulated period of time in which they will also receive two rounds of feedback from the mentors. This is the first time Saregama is getting involved in something like this and I think it is quite necessary to encourage such programmes."