Deepak Sharma's Black is Beautiful is a documentary about 11 visually challenged children involved in improvisational theatre. It is ready but needs funds for post-production and for print and publicity costs. Ditto for Chandrasekhar Reddy's Fireflies in the Abyss, about children being used in the coal mines of the Jaintia Hills in the Northeast. Then there is Mehran Amrohi's Chidiya, a feature film about two children and their dreams. These were among the 31 films - 21 fiction and 10 documentaries - that the Film Bazaar organised by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) in Goa earlier this week recommended to investors. The sight of raw, new directors coming up on stage to pitch for money from a room full of sales agents, festival curators, producers, investors and broadcasters, among others, was touching.
That the NFDC hosted a 90-minute session, which took the films out of the viewing rooms where professional buyers watch them and put them in the Grand Ballroom where the conference section of the Bazaar takes place, tells you two things. One, the ecosystem that will build a global film industry out of India is really evolving and two, the world is beginning to notice it.
Take the first one. Since corporatisation began in 2000, it has helped the Indian film industry grow by almost six times to Rs 13,000 crore. The big gap, however, remains in talent - in writing, direction, production and technical work, among other areas. While corporatisation has done a wonderful job in getting the commercial industry organised, the industry does not have the mindset or resources to nurture the developmental end.
This is where the NFDC comes in. Its Film Bazaar, an event focusing on co-production and distribution opportunities, kicked off in 2007, seven years after corporatisation. It is held alongside the International Film Festival of India in Goa every year and has become a key global market for South Asian cinema. In 2014, the co-production market featured 32 films; there were 12 new screenwriters and 110 new films in the viewing room. Thithi, which won two awards at the Locarno International Film Festival; and Island City, which won at the Venice Film Festival, are among the scripts that were born at the NFDC and displayed at Film Bazaar in 2014. Last year, Film Bazaar was attended by as many as 1,042 delegates.
This nurturing of the developmental end of the filmic value chain is a tough job. For instance, the writing of scripts -a long, painful and expensive process -is rarely funded. That explains the dearth of good writers. The NFDC's Screenwriters' Lab invites synopses of ideas for film scripts - there were 442 this year. A jury whittles these down to six. The first drafts are then taken by the writers to whichever festival the NFDC has a tie-up with - it was Sarajevo this year. It is redone and presented to a jury four days before Film Bazaar. The Bazaar then becomes a ground for them to pitch these scripts to production houses or film boards. The NFDC facilitates many of the meetings.
Over the years, the NFDC has become the facilitator, progenitor and, at times, co-producer for films such as The Ship of Theseus, Miss Lovely, Mumbai Cha Raja, B.A. Pass, Tasher Desh and Gangoobai. Several of these films - past examples include The Lunchbox and Shanghai - get marketed and distributed by mainstream studios, creating a public-private partnership that is helping to improve the quality of mainstream cinema in India.
That brings us to the second thing this nurturing does: it shapes perceptions about Indian cinema and creates a positive context for it beyond mainstream Hindi, Tamil and Telugu films. Some of the top film festival directors - from Cannes, Busan and Hong Kong -are in Goa almost every year. For them, Indian cinema means those films that can talk to audiences in Germany, Poland or China, with stories and storytelling styles that all audiences can relate to.
Add one critical factor to this. The Indian film industry remains one of the most independent, locally driven ones in the world. There are no quotas or limits on the foreign films coming to India, yet Hollywood's share of the local box-office has remained at five-seven per cent for years.
This bridging of the talent and idea gap with the commercial markets then is one of the best things that the state does for Indian cinema. It is helping create an ecosystem that will make for a creatively and commercially stronger Indian film industry.
Disclosure: The columnist was in Goa attending and speaking at Film Bazaar at the invitation and expense of the NFDC
Twitter: @vanitakohlik
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