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Gurjarvani- an audio-video production house with roots in catechesis
Gurjarvani video and audio production center in Ahmedabad is one of the best developed Jesuit centers in India. It also does programs that are more explicitly religious than many other centers; this emphasis comes from its roots in catechetics . Early missionaries like Fr. Antonio Rebellia from Anand Press used slides for catechetical work. When Fr. Miguel Aispun returned to the province after studying catechetics in Paris, he set up a pastoral center in Varoda. It continued from 1974-87 and did a lot of sound-and-slide shows. Gurjarvani developed out of this center.
Fr. Devasia Muthuplackal joined Aispun and became an expert on group media and low-cost media. He has also been doing training sessions in this area and has written two books called "Chalk Talk" that show teachers and presenters very low-cost ways of visualizing the subject matter. Muthuplackal says that his method uses visuals as a means to facilitate a way of analyzing problems in order to identify possible solutions. He has a 10-day course that he offers to teach a variety of methods (drawing, puppets, collage, sound-format stories).
Fr. Rappai Poothokaren was an economics professor at St. Xavier's College before studying video production at LMU from 1988-90 and then coming back to Ahmedabad. In 2001 he and Muthuplackal set up an audio studio, which has now been entrusted to Fr. Shadji Thekkemury who was sent to Gurjarvani. by the provincial. Fr. Ashok Vaghela is the fourth member of the staff; he is finishing his video production degree at LMU and will return to Gurjarvani.
Their work includes audio recording of religious music (tribal languages as well as Gujarati.); a life of Christ in two tribal languages; a children's gospel through songs; and programs on the sacraments. "Choices" is a 15-20 minute program on morality and value education. It is designed to be useable by Hindus as well as Christians. It first came out as an audio product in 1978, but was later broadcast over all-India radio. The last video in the series was produced in 2004.
Many NGOs use the studio and Gurjarvani likes to collaborate with them--provided the programs focus on issues rather than self-promotion for the organizations. They are interested also in women's empowerment for which they give workshops as well as producing material. They work in multiple languages. Normally the original production is in Gujarati which is then dubbed into Hindi and subtitled in English. They release a lot of things in the VCD format because players for that are widely available, even in villages.