Bengali is the sixth largest spoken language in the world with a sizeable portion of Bengali speaking population spread across the globe but the Bengali film industry lacked marketing skills and finance and therefore lagged behind many other regional film industries.
Speaking at a press conference in Kolkata, film director Goutam Ghosh said in a year only 40-45 Bengali films were released, most being small budget films costing between Rs 70 lakh to Rs 2-3 crore.
Due to lack of marketing skills, corporate sponsorship, budgetary constraints, most failed to get global or national exposure.
The Bengali film industry was unorganised with many small players but needed newer cost effective production techniques and skills to tap potential markets to sell and market products.
Tamil and Telugu film industries were far ahead in this, he added. Bangladesh, America, West Asia and South-east asia were good markets for Bengali productions lying untapped, said Ghose. The effort of Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in association with Eastern India Pictures Association, the Kolkata Film Festival and the FIAPF International Federation of Film Producers to hold a film market would help, he added.
The market could serve as a platform for film distributors, producers, marketeers and media companies from all over the world to buy, sell or explore possibilities of co-production or matching skills, said Sandipan Chakraborty, CII chairman for the eastern region. CII would like to take Bengali films overseas through such events. CII conducted a study with Ernst & Young on Bengali cinema in 2007 and highlighted critical issues hampering growth, like poor infrastructure, weak marketing and distribution, and suicidal competition, he added.
The industry should look at Bangladesh, which had more Bengalis than West Bengal.
Bangladesh as also regional markets in Jharkhand, Assam and Orissa had to be tapped, said Ghose.
Bangladesh was a great opportunity in view of the size of the audience and linguistic and cultural similarities.
CII would be looking at organising a similar event there to bridge the divide to help the state film industry, said Chakraborty.
Simultaneous releases in the two countries, as was done for the movie ‘Padma Nadir Majhi’, would boost revenues and lead to wider coverage, said Ghose.
