New Delhi: The Osian’s Group has announced the launch of its most ambitious knowledge-base education project, the Osianama Learning Experience (OLE) which will open up the world’s largest archive on Indian and World cinema and the arts, along with other related projects which will kick start the celebrations this year.
The Osianama Learning Experience (OLE) will be a dedicated online knowledge search engine and education content provider for the Indian & Asian Arts, Culture and World Cinema. It is the most comprehensive and integrated examination of the subjects ever documented and researched, and will be made publicly available with a rigorous daily updating process with the key focus being the last “300 years of India’s Art, Culture and Cinema”.
The Online Search Engine – Theosianama.com , the first phase of OLE, will be provided free to the public, cutting through the politics of access to knowledge and education which has plagued India and many other parts of the world for decades.
OLE is envisioned to bring unique and rare synergies between the physical and virtual worlds of art and cinematic education.
The second part of the “virtual-physical synergy” will see the public launch of Osianama at the Kila, which will be India’s first Museum based on “Cinema and the Arts”. The Museum designed as a multimedia platform mixing digital and electronic technologies of display, knowledge storage & dissemination, in addition to traditional museum displays, will also play host to numerous exhibitions, auctions, workshops, conferences and master classes in the coming months, involving all leading members of the film fraternities.
Osian’s and Neville Tuli’s efforts towards preserving cinematic and artistic heritage have been unrelenting, despite all the financial difficulties faced in the last three years. Over the years Osian’s has spent more than INR 500 crores in building the knowledge-base, library, collection and archive so as to finally share it with the public.
It was twenty years ago in 1993 when Neville Tuli began his work on building a vast knowledge-base as part of his cultural infrastructure-building vision. The publication of the seminal book The Flamed Mosaic in 1996 heralded that process, followed with India’s first indigenous art auctions in 1997 and 1999. The establishment of Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art (Estb. 2000), Osian’s–Cinefan & Osian’s–Cinemaya (2004) and Osian’s Learning Experience (2009) took forward the knowledge-base institutionalizing process, which will now unfold with Theosianama.com launching in 2013.