Kerala State Children's Educational Film Festival, organized by the State Institute of Educational Technology (SIET), begun at Thiruvanthapuram on Monday (September 8). The venue is the Priyadarshini Planetarium in the Science and Technology Museum. The three-day film festival, on the theme 'Children have something to say, hear and see', will screen 78 films, including 41 made by children. 21 films will compete in the primary category, while 20 will compete in the secondary school category. The films' script, direction, set design and narration were all done by students themselves, except the expert advice for camera work, editing, graphics and animation only. The films will cover a variety of topics ranging from adulteration and pollution to issues more relevant to children and adolescents such as substance abuse, child labour, problems faced by girl students and disability. While inaugurating the festival, Kerala Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Vijayakumar said that children should be taught film-making and film appreciation at the school level. "Now there are courses for teaching journalism. So why not film making! Film-making and film appreciation should be incorporated in the school curriculum," he added. Education Minister M.A. Baby, who is the chairman of the festival, hoped that the festival would contribute to improving children's world view as much as they increased their cultural horizons. General Education Secretary James Varghese and SIET Director Babu Sebastian also spoke during the occasion. There will be awards for the best script, direction, camera work, editing, background score, sound recording, set designing, graphics, animation, dubbing/ narration. Students identified as best directors will be given an award in memory of P. Ramdas, director of the Malayalam film Newspaper Boy (1955). The awards will be given away at the valedictory ceremony on September 10 by Assembly Speaker K. Radhakrishnan.