Pawan K Shrivastava. Telegraph picture

Chhapra youth Pawan K. Shrivastava (31) would impart knowledge on crowd funding to would-be filmmakers in Andaman.

He has been invited by Andaman Film Society to conduct workshop on filmmaking through crowd funding, when Pawan took the help of social media to reach out to people to collect money for his film.

Pawan made his first film Naya Pata through crowd funding. The film was released on June 27 under the banner of PVR Director’s Rare and was screened in eight cities, including Patna and Bangalore. For his first film, people from Bihar settled in Australia, Finland, Delhi, Mumbai and US helped him in generating around Rs 8 lakh.

Now, Pawan would conduct a 10-day workshop starting September 24 in Port Blair, where around 40 people, mostly students, would take part.

Formed in 2012, the Andaman Film Society regularly organises workshops on short films and documentaries. In the very first year, the society had invited Ranjan Das, a visiting faculty from Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.

While speaking to The Telegraph from Port Blair, the secretary of Andaman Film Society, Samhita Veda Acharya, said: “We have invited Pawan to conduct the workshop on filmmaking and crowd funding. A talented person like him is a youth icon for many. Considering his previous film Naya Pata, which was made through crowd funding, the society decided to call him to impart training to interested people of Andaman.”

On the reason behind calling Pawan to conduct the workshop, Acharya said: “People of Andaman are not aware about world cinema, regional cinema and independent filmmaking. They know only about Bollywood. As crowd funding seems to be an emerging concept in India, we want to make it more popular here. So, we thought of calling Pawan to conduct the workshop on such topics.”

After the success of Naya Pata, Pawan has already started work on his next film, Haashiye Ke Log, which will highlight the plight of Dalits in modern India.

It was for the first time in the history of Bihar that a group of nine young people made a feature film — Naya Pata — through crowd funding. A method in which there is no producer and funds are generated through social media reaching out to near and dear ones.

Expressing happiness over conducting the workshop in Port Blair, Pawan said: “It is the happiest moment for me because my hard work has finally paid. When I made my first film, I never thought I would get so much applaud because the concept was very new in India.”

Pawan was inspired by director Onir, who made I Am, with the help of crowd funding and went on to bag two National Awards.