Pitch your documentaries here!

An international workshop provides new hope to documentary filmmakers struggling for funds.

The life of a documentary filmmaker in India is not easy. Viewers, glutted on Bollywood, do not want to see your films, so naturally cinema halls won't screen them and financiers won't give you the money to make them.

The only occasions to show your film are film festivals and a few forums for converts like VIKALP; even Doordarshan does not screen as many documentaries as it used to. As for funding, the Public Service Broadcasting Trust is the only institutional support for Indian documentary-makers.

But now there's hope, and the promise of funding, with Docedge, an international pitching workshop organised by the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata.

Into its fourth year now, Docedge is a week-long affair (held from January 9-15 this year) which concludes with a batch of independent Indian filmmakers pitching their ideas to a panel of commissioning editors from international television networks. If the latter like what they hear or see, they may pay the entire cost of the project or part-fund it.

For documentary-makers here, this exposure and training in "pitching" is of the utmost importance. Over the last decade or so, in Europe and now elsewhere too, pitching has grown to become one of the main doors for international co-production "" IDFA-Forum at Amsterdam and Cinemart at the IFFR in Roterdam, being two of the most well-known of the numerous pitching forums worldwide.

In the past three years, as many as 15 films from Docedge have been picked up by major international channels for co-production. Some of these films are Kaushik's Something to Die For: Love in India (ARTE-ZDF and BBC), Shyamal Karmakar's I'm the Very Beautiful (YLE) and Amitabh Chakra-borty's Bishar Blues (YLE again).

Word has spread. Commissioning editors and tutors "" "some of the best people in the business", says Nilotpal Majumdar, who teaches in the editing department at SRFTI and is the prime mover of Docedge "" are also flocking to Kolkata.

This year there were seven commissioning editors "" Anna Miralis of SBS Independent (Australia), Bruni Burres of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Programme, Rudy Buttignol (TVO, Canada), Nick Ware (UK's Community Channel), Claire Aguilar of ITVS (San Francisco), Ikka Vehkahalti (YLE of Finland), Ryota Kotani (NHK, Japan), and Sabine Bubeck-Paaz (ZDF, also in charge of theme evenings at ARTE). The first four are first-timers at Docedge. In addition, there were six tutors.

Many among this assembly have been coming to Docedge since its inception and have developed close ties with the people they've met here. Rada Sesic, one of the tutors, is quite a champion of Indian documentaries in Europe and as a selector at JVF, has helped 25 Indian documentaries find support. Rudi Buttignol, who's here for the first time, is looking to build relationships, to "engage" with the film-makers to develop a project.

Clearly, India's emergence as an economic hotspot has fuelled interest in the country among television audiences worldwide. Heino Deckert, who runs Deckert Distribution, which distributes documentaries, is of the view that "there is a growing audience for Indian documentaries in all of Europe and north America."

Love in India and Cosmic Sex, which he will be co-producing, will be shown in a single thematic evening on ARTE. Buttignol says much the same thing "" "India is an important source of original stories about the human condition, poised as it is between a poor, developing country and one that is richer, more confident."

Docedge has grown in other ways too. From 10 film-makers pitching in the first year, this year there were 17. This year, NHK has made commitments to as many as five films from Docedge for a special India series on Japanese TV.

Agrees Rada Sesic, "It is growing bigger, better and stronger." This year, Docedge put out two booklets "" Access, on the major festivals, funds and workshops in various countries through the calendar, and the EDN TV Guide, which gives information about the various channels that screen documentaries in Europe, which are slots, how many films they acquire and so on "" all invaluable to an aspiring documentary maker in India.

But funds is not all there is to Docedge, as everyone hastens to add. "It provides a platform for Indian documentary makers to interact with experienced professionals with international exposure, to develop their ideas, to learn how best to present it to a international audience," says Majumdar.

Butalia, a veteran in the Indian documentary scene, for example, was another first-timer at Docedge and felt a little sceptical, but found that the workshop "helps set your thoughts in a more professional manner".

Docedge also provides an oppotunity to network within the domestic circuit, which can only help this small and divided community to share ideas and examples.

Tutor Stefano Tealdi, who's been coming to Docedge since 2004, notes, "In the first years, they would not even like to talk about their projects for fear that others would come to know of them. Now they realise the benefits of sharing ideas and experiences. Presentation skills too have improved a lot, so that allows us to delve more deeply into the stories."

Strangely, local TV networks were absent even for the panel discussion on how Indian television could take a more active part in promoting/integrating documentaries.

"But it can't be helped," says Majumdar, "It's a different system from the European one and they perhaps didn't want to be compelled into a commitment. Even in DD, the whole process of commissioning and co-production of documentaries is so bureaucratised."

All the more reason for Indian documentary-makers to look forward to Docedge.