Business at Cannes
Malti Sahai
Cannes, May 18: The third day of Cannes on May 14, started with a series business meetings with various countries. The Minister of Culture and Digital Economy met the Minister of state for Information and Broadcasting Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and discussed various collaboration which could be explored with India. Col. Rathore invited the Minister to attend the Intertiol Film Festival of India to be slated to take place in India in the month of November this year. As the day folded ahead there were very captivating session with the gastronomical king “Vikas Khan “in presence of Dr. Mohan Kumar, Ambassador of India to France. He launched his first documentary Film the Kitchens of Gratitude. Following this session the Cast and Crew of Farewell My Indian Soldier introduced the subject and the making of the movie to the audience. The movie was screened at Palais at Cannes Film Festival.
This session was a interesting session moderated by Cary Rajender Sawhney, Executive Programming Director, London Indian Film Festival. The panel was attended by Young –Woo Kim , Programmer, Busan Intertiol Film Festival, Paolo Bertolin, Programmer, Venice Film Festival, than Fischer , MD Stray Dog, SelvaggioVelo, Florence Indian Film festival ,and Awadesh Kumar.
The session had a detailed discussion on the selection criteria and effectiveness of various film festivals carried around the world. The panelists discussed that the Indian films have a great impact in different film festivals and this has also increased the distribution exponentially. It has been observed that Italy is the most difficult market in terms of Indian films like Lunchbox, Gangs of Wasseypur and it is very difficult to distribute a movie there. Venice had few films which made it to the festival and even got an award but there has been a long gap and this dry market looks to end soon. While selecting a movie, Italy focuses mainly on quality, themes, like showcasing an urban city or a rural area. If similar films reach both the short film corner as well as feature film corner, then one has to be left out depending upon various other factors. ‘UK has a brilliant market for Indian films and only UK premier movies are screened. UK encourages films from the Shyam Benegal creativity group. Documentary films and short film too have a market. There are only 26 films which are screened in London film festival and the best film gets an award by the royal family. Korea is an easy market where there have been screening of all movies which make it there. There is no award series or a competition. In the last Korea film festival about 16 Indian films were shown.
Vikramajot Roy mentioned that productions like Lunchbox are unique but limited, as a co-production is done at 3 stages. Netflix and other digital mediums have proved to be successful in India and the major revenue lies here.
