International Film Festival of India... in Goa (stop by if interested in film)

fredericknoronha

CII pushing for wider market for Indian films

From Frederick Noronha, Indo-Asian News Service

PANAJI, Nov 27 (IANS) For a country which has the largest number of films produced in the world, India is aggressively looking to market its films more widely across just national borders.

CII, the Confederation of Indian Industry, which was one of the key driving
forces in re-launching the International Film Festival of India (IFFI)
through a Cannes-like event in Goa, is working to make this happen at the
latest festival which opens in Panaji on Monday evening.

Organisers of the IFFI at Goa, eager to make their event seem a success,
claimed that a 'film bazaar' was being held for the "first time ever on this
scale and size".

This 'film bazaar' is part of CII's initiative to what it calls "develop and
globalise" the Indian entertainment industry.

India is a major regional center for cinema. The Indian film industry is the
largest in the world, with over 1200 movies being released in the year 2002 alone.

Supported largely by the vast film-going Indian public, recent trends are
showing increasing popularity of Indian films abroad, specially in countries with large expatriate Indian populations.

Industry lobby-group CII is launching the November 30-December 8 'film
bazaar' in association with the central Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting, and the government's promotion network the National Films Development Corporation (NFDC), apart from the support from the government of host state Goa.

Goa itself doesn't have much of a film-culture, but has invested heavily in
the IFFI, in part to boost its image and possibly gain from the fallouts for
a state which has been long promoting itself as a destination for in-bound
tourism.

CII said the event would provide space for "negotiation between the
film-maker and the financier", not just for domestic players.
"Co-productions, joint-creative endeavours, sharing of technology take
center-stage and superficial differences fade away," said promoters,
explaining what they anticipated from the event.

Indian films are seen by analysts of the sector to be facing changing, if
not trying, times. Between the 1950s and 1990s, many locally produced movies made profits, with little competition from television or imported movies. Of late, TV and cable channels, movie imports, and rampant "piracy" are problems seen to lead to many Indian films turning into commercial failures.

Major Indian languages have their own film industries -- in Hindi, Bengali,
Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. These are referred to as Bollywood (merging Bombay with Hollywood), and other neologisms like Kollywood (from the Kodambakkam district of Chennai), Tollywood (for Telugu films), an Tollygunge (from Tollygunge district of Kolkata).

Indian commercial films, facing challenges as they are, are showing signs of undergoing changing times from their long, three-hour format often marked for its musical and action-oriented themes which are often melodramatic or sentimental and interrupted by song-and-dance routines.

Some quarters see independent films as the future of art cinema in India, in a country where direct government patronage of the medium has largely declined.

CII says India's recent multiplex expansion and the "mushrooming of fiercely active film-societies and film-making courses" have created a "new generation of producers, directors, editors, actors and distributors".

Organisers of the 'film bazaar' expect film-brokers and production house
representatives keen on joint ventures, including from countries like the
UK, US, Romania, Brazil, Mauritius, France and Sri Lanka.

Also planned is a conference on the 'globalisation of the indian
entertainment industry'.

They also expect representatives of other international film festivals held across the Indian sub-continent to attend "to assimilate the economics that drive film-making in the region". South Asia, it argued, offers relatively lower shooting costs, affordable, state-of-the-art post-production facilities, and picturesque locales.

Exhibitors at the event are to include Sahara India Parivar, the
government-owned Prasar Bharti Corporation, Satellite Media Group,
Andhra-based Ramoji Rao Film City, UTV, Adlabs, Indian Film Exporters
Association, Eros Multimedia, Mukta Arts, the Government of India's Films
Division, Children's Film Society, Osian's, Cinefan, EFX Magic (Prasad
Corporation), Mauritius Film Development Corporation, Ernst & Young,
Digiquest, and Prime Focus. (Indo-Asian News Service)

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fredericknoronha

From Frederick Noronha

PANAJI (Goa), Nov 28: Taking on a larger-than-life role, Goa's BJP chief minister Manohar Parrikar is desperate to emerge a hero out of a successful staging of the IFFI in India's smallest state. But the event, which begins later Monday, is causing some headaches for local residents.

Weeks of an attempt to completely re-do the state capital, and serpentile traffic jams have left citizens with mixed feelings of irritation and pride on hosting the prestigious event. Security is tight too.

"There's simply too much hype about it. People feel they're missing out on something. Goa is staging the film festival for the first time, so there are bound to be problems," a senior government official told this correspondent, at the riverside venue, a refurbished government arts and culture centre called the Kala Academy.

Technocrat-chief minister Parrikar, meanwhile, has meanwhile voiced confidence. In between getting photographed praying at a local temple for the "success" of IFFI, the CM has dismissed all fears of an overkill or an infrastructure collapse in India's smallest state during the event.

Goa was chosen to be the permanent venue of the International Film Festival of India when the BJP ruled New Delhi. After some uncertainity following the change of government in the national capital, the state is going ahead with the event, though with lesser than anticipated Central funding.

For his part, the ever-confident Parrikar has harnessed the event to work out a complete re-do of Goa's state capital, which has a small resident population of around 60,000 but a daily floating population of officials, visitors and tourists of over two times that number.

Parrikar is also the local MLA for Panaji constituency. Criticism has hit the CM for the lavish expenditure on the event -- touching between Rs 150 to Rs 200 crores (Rs 1500 to 2000 million) -- more so since Goa has been in the financial doldrums and facing a heavy debt burden in recent years.

Goa, being spoken of as the Indian version of Cannes and eager to build up the atmosphere, sees local authorities organise later on Monday an off-season Carnival on the streets of Panaji.

Delhi officials have pointed to Goa's "special ambience" and "technologically advanced infrastructure". Parrikar has voiced Goa's commitment to make the IFFI a "resounding success" and said the local "pristine beaches, undulating landscapes and hospitable people... make Goa an apt locale" for IFFI.

Citizens will also be given screenings along the beaches, using large screens. Parrikar has dismissed the criticism as being political, or meant to weaken his position or ensure his downfall. He also claimed that some were talking with "half baked" knowledge or because "interests" were affected.

But with a largely-friendly media in tow, the BJP has so far managed to keep the criticism at bay.

In Goa, circles close to the Parrikar-dominated BJP government have been stung by criticism from some other states, over the shifting of the IFFI permanent venue to Goa, a place that lures the visitor but hardly has any film-culture worth the name. (ENDS)

fredericknoronha

From Frederick Noronha

PANAJI (Goa), Nov 28: In a country of a thousand million-plus, so many stories are just waiting to be told, and films being show-cased at the 35th International Film Festival of India here suggests independent films are fast becoming the future of art cinema in India.

From the nuclearisation of South Asia to the human price of war, films on artists and folk musicians, about ethnic tribal clashes in the North East, and even a film about a film -- these themes and more feature among the 20 'non-feature films' in Iffi-2004's Indian Panorama section.

India's film market currently consists of big-budget mass-market films with big stars, and independent films made on a shoestring by aspiring auteurs, as is the case with today's Western film market.

From across the country, films being showcased in the Goa capital of Panaji -- a riverside town also called Panjim or Ponnje -- are in Malayalam, Hindi (three films), Hindi-Punjabi, Tamil, Manipuri, and Marathi. Ten films are in English, with one coming as an English-Gujarati mix. One is without any dialogue.

Lawyer Satyajit Bhatkal's 'Chale Chalo... The Lunacy of Film Making' is a feature-length documentary that tells the story of the making of the Bollywood blockbuster film 'Lagaan'.

Says Bhatkal (40), "As a member of the 'Laagan' production team, I sensed the drama in the process of making it and began shooting what was happening in and around the set."

'Agni', by KR Manoj (30), a long-time activist of Kerala's film society movement, reflects on rape and its aftermath. This 14-minutes Malayalam is in black-and-white and says its "shuns the easy, condescending or patronizing orthodox 'feminist' line".

Hindi-Punjabi film 'Chaurus Chaand' is about revolutionary and poet Avtaar Singh Sandhu, gunned down in 1988 by Khalistani militants. Director Vibhu Puri, a student at the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India, says he grew up in old Delhi "on a staple diet of Hindi masala movies and Punjabi folk music".

Sans dialogue, 'Ek Aakash' is set in a multi-cultural and multi-religious
sub-urban town. English-language films from India range from 'The Green Warriors - Apatanis' (which looks at the unusual tribal sustainable agricultural practices in Arunachal), to 'I Couldn't Be Your Son, Mom' (about a gender crisis), 'Invisible Parsis: The Poor of a Prosperous Community' by Kaevan Umrigar, and Sanjivan Lal's 'Is God Deaf?' (on religion-linked noise pollution).

Dhananjoy Mandal (37) of Howrah looks at an often-misunderstood normadic tribe, that kills crows for their meat in 'A Journey With The Kakmaras'.

Manipuri-language 39 minute film 'Nongdi Tarak-Khidare' (But It Never Rained) looks at the Naga-Kuki ethnic clashes of the 1990s, and highlights how social unrest impacts innocent people.

Some other 'non-feature' films being show-cased at this year's IFFI include noted socio-political documentary maker Anand Patwardhan's 'War and Peace', and others dealing with the trivialization of the media, Sunni Muslim folk musicians of western Rajasthan, aging, and documentaries on the work of eminent artist Rabin Mondal as well as Santiniketan, the institution built by the lone Indian Nobel laureat Rabindranath Tagore.

In an industry that otherwise focuses on entertainment and creating a happy make-believe world, there's also a number of stories of the stark reality of India emerging, with little of the melodrama, sentimentalism and musical action that otherwise goes into feature films.

Besides commercial cinema, India has long had a high-minded Indian art cinema (called by film critics as "New Indian Cinema" or "the Indian New Wave"). In India, it's also called "art films" as opposed to mainstream commercial cinema.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, art film was usually government-supported cinema. Aspiring directors could get Central or state government grants to produce non-commercial films on Indian themes.

Many of these directors were graduates of the government film school, FTII. But today, there's coming from a wider range. For instance, K Bikram Singh (whose 'Passing Out' cautions about the threat to certain kinds of folk music) was a senior government official till he quit in 1983 to become a full-time film-maker.

fredericknoronha

From Frederick Noronha

PANAJI (Goa), Nov 30 (IANS): Screenings got off to a start at Goa, the country's new permanent venue for its main film festival, Tuesday morning, after an evening of official functions and speeches late Monday.

Over 200 films and 400 screenings are to be spread over the ten-day festival. Its entries include films under Asian competition, cinema of the world, indian and foreign retrospectives, tributes and homages, Indian panorama and mainstream Indian cinema major sections.

Award-winning director Mani Ratnam is the chair of the Asian Competition section, which will also be adjudged by German film-maker Florian Gallenberger, Egyptian actor Mahmoud Kabil, Italian director Irene Bignardi and Senegalese director Moussa Sena Absa.

Fifteen films from ten countries take part in the Asian competition section. China, India, Israel, Russia and Sri Lanka had two films each, with Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Iran, Malaysia and Thailand being the other entrants.

In all, some 60 films from 40 different countries take part in the 'cinema
of the world' section.

Films being highlighted here as premiers include 'American Daylight' (2004, Roger Christian, India), 'Finding Neverland (2004, Marc Forster UK/US), 'The Forgotten' (Joseph Ruben, US) and 'The Incredibles' (Brad Bird, US).

Special screenings are also scheduled of two new Indian films -- 'Hari Om' (Ganapathy Bharat) and 'Chai Pani' (Manu Rewal).

Organisers announced that the retrospectives and 'country focus' films would aim to showcase the "rich cultural flavours" from social milieus of diverse countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia and Canada.

Five films by tennis star-turned-Hollywood producer Ashok Amritraj will be screened, including the Indian premier of his 'Raising Helen'. Italian versatile star of four decades Vittorio Gassman, known as the 'Olivier of Italy', who died in 2000 gets a special homage with six films screened in Goa.

Burkino Faso director Jean-Marie Gaston, known for his translation of African oral tradition to the screen, has a special section with four films screened. Polish actor, director, professor and rector Jerzy Sturh also has four films of his being screened at the 35th IFFI, being hosted for the first time ever in the holiday destination of Goa.

Other special sections will look at films funded by the Hubert Bals Fund -- an institution designed to bring remarkable or urgent feature films and feature-length creative documentaries by innovative film-makers from the 'developing' world closer to fulfilment.

Movies from Iran, Angola, Macedonia, Mauritania, Uruguay, Brazil and Albania come up in this category.

German films 'made in Bavaria' -- the southern region of that European country in the heartland of Europe -- come in with a special selection of eight films, which a Canadian showcase includes five more.

Egypt (five films), Taiwan (6) and a 'raw edge' section meant to encourage upcoming directors and film-makers which showcases five more are to be screened to.

One special feature is the screening of five films from Portugal, the former colonial ruler in Goa, with whom cultural and other links have largely been cut-off after the sudden and bitter end to colonial rule here in 1961.

German-based cine camera manufacturer ARRI -- which says its cameras are extensively used in the numerically largest-in-the-world Indian film industry -- is to arrange a "technical retro" on its cameras during the festival.

It will focus on the digital age of film, how a new camera is designed, case studies of certain models, and other technical subjects over two-hour slots spread over four days.

Some 21 feature and 20 non-feature (largery independent documentary) films are also being screened in the Indian panorama section. Twelve more -- in languages ranging from Tamil to Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, and Hindi -- come up in the mainstream Indian cinema section.

Special tributes are being paid to Indian stars of yesteryears, including Yash Johar, Nargis Dutt, Mehmood, Soundarya, Vijay Anand, Dr Bhabendra Nath Saikia, and for the 50th anniversary of 'Pather Panchali' and the 75th anniversary of the Prabhat Film Company.

fredericknoronha

From Frederick Noronha

PANAJI (Goa), Dec 1: Goa plays host to the IFFI's first-ever 'Film Bazaar'. While the big screen is big news and a powerful medium of entertainment, it is also big money.

Officials put things mildly when they concede that the Film Bazaar idea is "young". Participation and involvement is still quite low. India's huge domestic market might just be a millstone when it comes to expanding links with the outside world, and allowing two-way trade links to flourish and grow.

Kabir-speak
-----------

Why, someone wanted to know, did Kabir Bedi get caught up in rank bad films along with all the great work he's know for abroad?

Down in Goa, Bedi -- who plays Mo (Mohan Dagga) an expat Punjabi bankrupt businessman in the Baz Taylor-film 'Take 3 Girls', a film about rappers and the sub-culture of British youth who speak a language the others don't understand -- said people do films "for all kinds of reasons".

"Sometimes you do it just for the cash. Sometimes you just get caught in bad films (without realising it). Octopussy, the Bond film, was such a silly thing... but it was a Bond film! There are things you do for strategic reasons," he said.

Bedi added, not without a tinge of pride: "Survival and learning continuously along the way are my reasons for being here. At my age you realise its a long-term marathon, not just a 100-metre dash. It's about long-term survival, and I've managed to survive on three continents."

Foreign, Indian, Goan
---------------------

For a state where foreign tourists feel at home, and find to be a 'soft introduction' to India, there were surprisingly few foreign delegates at Goa's first-ever IFFI.

Officials from here who have been trying to reinvent Cannes on the Indian west coast argue that this was the situation in Delhi too, and excuse shortcomings in the event due to its "first time" nature in Goa. Some suggest that a government-led film festival isn't quite the route to replicating Cannes.

Participants and films from India -- and even the diaspora -- were all over in evidence. To engage local sentiment, those who couldn't make it into the new government-backed privately-run multiplex and the re-done Kala Academy could see movies on the beach.

Konkani plays were put up on the sidelines of the festival. There also were a host of other activities ranging from music and art shows, to a make-believe recreated parade of Goa's two main festivals (the Carnival and the Shigmo), even if somewhat lack-lustre. Street clowns on stilts, folk dancers, live bands, street-side art shows, and a dazzlingly-lit by night promenade were the other draws. December 5 will see a vintage and classic car rally, as the state government pulls no stops to work incorporate every crowd-pulling idea Goa has known of.

After all, IFFI comes bang in the midst of Goa's most crowded tourist season, and having Panaji's main arterial road blocked to traffic is some price to pay, though government servants have the sop of being able to leave office an hour earlier.

Not shining
-----------

Villagers from the tourism-dominated constituency of Calangute were protesting over poor power and water supplies, and the reality that locals doing business in beach-side 'shacks' (makeshift restaurants) were being pushed out of the trade.

Chief minister Manohar Parrikar, in his hands-on fire-fighting style, was quick to meet a team from the area and offer a series of assurances.

Protesters, backing the local MLA and protesting not far from Goa's first luxury hotel set up in the early 'seventies at Sinquerim, threatened a crowd of more than the earlier 300 if the issue was not sorted out.

While Goa's capital Panaji (or Panjim) is decked up as never before, and ablaze with a million tiny bulbs at night and lamp-posts imported from Europe, infrastructure in the rest of the State is weak and iffy.

Kisna
-----

Here's another period film, interwoven with the love-twist aimed to work at the level of the audience's emotions. Subhash Ghai-Javed Anand-A R Rahman and team give us 'Kisna', scheduled for a "worldwide release" on January 21, 2005 with its music release slated for Dec 6.

Says Ghai: "There are two heroines, and the story is set in the 1940s. We've mostly seen Indo-British relations from our side, we've always seen it as based on hatred. I found a love story (in the story a Briton mentioned about his grandfather, who was an officer in pre-1947 India)."

Why not Krishna? "Kisna is a symbolic name for a rural boy from the mountains in (current-day) Uttranchal. It's a rural name. Had he been born in (downtown) Delhi, he would have been Krishna," explained Ghai.

Via mobile
----------

Reflecting the Goan sense of humour, here's an SMS doing the rounds:

"IFFI festival offer. Dial 100, say bomb in Multiplex & win free trip to Aguada Jail. Best sea facing rooms, free food, clothing available. Hurry offer opens today."

Aguada is Goa's main jail, located at the scenic but not necessarily pleasant riverfront setting where freedom fighters were once despatched by the Portuguese. 100 is the police emergency number, and a bomb scare before the IFFI in Goa in part contributed to the ubiquitous security -- some armed -- visible all over the venue. ENDS

fredericknoronha

From Frederick Noronha

PANAJI (Goa), Dec 1: Germany is looking out for Indian audiences via the little screen, and is keen to build links with the growing number of channels now beaming out to audiences in this sub-continent.

"German relations with the Indian film industry is nearly zero. We do have excellent relations with the state broadcaster, Doordarshan," German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle distribution head for Asia and Australia Angelika Newel told this correspondent.

Taking part in the 35th International Film Festival of India, being held in Goa for the first time, Ms Newel said the idea of a 'film bazaar' had attracted their participation.

"There's a very good one in Cannes (which Goa is trying to model itself on). This is a starting point, and it's still a very small bazaar," she said.

DW-Radio broadcasts in 30 languages, and the services it offers include its satellite TV, and the large decade-old dw-world.de website. "What we are interested in promoting now is TransTel, a service that supplies German programs to TV stations," said Ms. Newel.

"Getting in touch with India's TV industry is rather hard. Our specialisation is in the field of documentary. We would be happy to have TV viewers here accessing the quality productions of German stations," she added.

TransTel -- which includes programs broadcast by the ARD and ZDF networks from Germany, and programs co-produced by TransTel itself, are edited and adapted to meet target global audiences, including in Asia. There are some thousand hours of documentaries and reports in fields like science, medicine, history, environment, arts and entertainment.

"Our children's programmes always have an educational background. It often includes elements such as teaching youngsters how to treat the environment, or how to cope in situations of conflict," said Newel.

Newel felt that the bridge-building activity between India and continental Europe, specially Germany, is "not yet happening" and ironically the spurt in the number of Indian local channels meant that overseas programming like Deutsche Welle was just "put aside".

"We do broadcast in the digital format. But since that requires special equipment to receive it (which few have), it's as good as not being there," she admitted. She said every two years or so, Doordarshan took up about a hundred hours of TransTel programming.

Newel said Germany offered another perspective to global issues, compared to channels like BBC and CNN. "One new audience is Indian students wanting to study in Germany, who can get a whole lot of information on www.campus-germany.de. Most students here don't realise that education in Germany is free, though one needs to first learn the language," she added.

Deutsche Welle was set up in 1953, in the aftermath of World War II, and It claims to have one of Europe's most modern broadcasting centres in Bonn, which also does programming in languages like Bengali and Urdu.

Deutsche Welle's relay stations around the globe include one at Trincomalee in Sri Lanka, and says DW-TV can be received by over 200 million households. It also runs German language courses, and has been broadcasting since 1964 via radio in Hindi.

For awhile, it was the only radio station in the world to broadcast in Sanskrit. Since 1998, it has been a key promoter of the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) format of broadcasting, involving the digitization of short-wave and opening up a new world to radio listeners.

Deutsche Welle also has active radio programming in Dari and Pashto, languages of Afghanistan. TransTel stands for the German Television Transcription Corporation.

fredericknoronha

From Frederick Noronha

PANAJI (Goa), Dec 4: Make a film in a day, even if you're in your raw twenties. Don't be a hostage of bureaucracies and red-tape or even film-stars and financiers... sounds too good to be true?

Not just that, an experiment with hands-on mentoring for youngsters interested in films is promising you a 'world premier' literally hours after you put your film together.

At Goa's first-ever International Film Festival of India, a venture called '24x7 Making Movies' is giving some 40 Indian youngsters, aged 18 to 24 years old, the chance to put together a non-documentary film, with plot et al, against the state's scenic backdrop.

"Conceive it, shoot it, edit it and show it." That's h ow it's intended to work, according to curators of the event curators Dev Benegal and Anuradha Parikh.

Film Director Dev Benegal, known for his films 'English August' and 'Split Wide Open', explains the concept: "24x7 involves making movies in a simple way, that allows anyone to make a film for free."

"It aims to give a youngster the opportunity to enter tilms, without waiting for years, and the NDFC (National FIlm Development Corporation) or distributors. Not having to struggle in dealing with bureaucracies, red tape, film-stars and financiers," says he.


So, this team is offering cameras and editing backup for those just out of their teens, to shoot. "It's not triviliasing the art of film-making. Making a film entirely in 24 hours (of a lengthy between 24 seconds to 24 minutes) is a most difficult thing," says Benegal.

So far, some 200 very-short films are being made, out of which 20 are ready. Each morning, the film festival screens these at a newly-built multiplex here.

"We seem to be running into a major fault-line in the movie industry. Demographics are showing that people who go to the audiences are increasingly young. Yet the people who control the industry are in their sixties. So you have sixty-year-olds trying to act and think like a 24-year-old," said Benegal.

This is the second year such an event is being held, the first was at the Kala Ghoda arts festival, held in downtown Mumbai.

"We chose the temes of nature or violence this year. It's nice if you give some frame, otherwise it's too open and too loose," said co-curator Anuradha Parikh, a practising architect-turned-producer.

"The mainstream bombards us with one set of actors and one set of stories. So we end up believing that there is only one way of doing things, and only a few stories to tell," adds Parikh.

Both urge that issues like money and financial success should not be the only criteria by which film-making talent among the young is judged. "Everything in the world doesn't need to have a commercial side to it, but that's all we believe in nowadays," said Benegal.



Some 250-300 youngsters initially showed their interest, 150 applied. "But with five cameras and six editing suits, we had to basically select 40 -- on the basis of their concept, not their background in film-making or lack of it," added Benegal.

He added: "Worries about censorship are misplaced. The issue is control. Once you get the freedom, then it's amazing (how people don't abuse it). None of the youngsters here had to do the silly things that Bollywood needs to do to get the crowds in."

This concept's team claim that one of their movies had been shortlisted for Cannes, the prestigious French film festival. But they said it was too early to give details. "You never know who might emerge from here," says co-ordinator Sopan Muller.

Nitesh Jain (19), Mahesh from Mumbai, Sukanya (22) and Robin D'Cruz from Pune were among those hopefuls of making it via this escalator they hope could give them a speedy leg-up. Five teams are from Goa, organisers said.

"There's a team from Kerala. They've struggled to come here, to shoot in Goa a place which they don't know. That too, within a day. It's a huge struggle," said Dev Benegal.

"Shyam Benegal took 14 years to make 'Ankur'. Would any of you wait so long to make a film," ask the promoters of this concept. (ENDS)