A treasure trove of 250 children’s films made by directors such as Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, M.S. Sathyu, K.A. Abbas and Tapan Sinha — in Hindi and regional languages — are lying as reels with the Children’s Film Society of India.
“These are not films on children’s issues, but films addressed to them, that children across generations have enjoyed. There is a need to take these films to today’s children. We have now embarked on a project to dub all the 250 films in all regional languages and take them to schools across all districts of the country,” Shravan Kumar, CEO, CFSI, said speaking at a session on production and marketing of children’s films.
Addressing the issue of lack of opportunities and patronage for these films from mainstream distribution channels, he said children’s films were a niche market.
“Morning shows in theatres are running empty. Arrange for children’s film screenings and get students for viewings through the principals. You will get your market and will also include films in education. Even multiplex chains have helped us with this model,” Mr. Kumar said.
But it was S. Raghunath, professor with Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, who had an unexpected solution to marketing films. “There are content producers (script writers) and content controllers (investors) in the chain. But sadly what I see is that there is no link in this chain. My advice is to focus on the content producers, the script writers. This needs to get more organised. Distribution channels and marketing has turned very democratic today with the digital medium. There is such a large quantity of content out there, the only way for your product to win is through quality,” he said.
N. Vidyashankar, artistic director, BIFFes, wryly pointed out that the session on children’s films at BIFFes is a bit ironic because, as per government rules children aren’t allowed for film festivals. “I had a child actor in one of the films being screened coming to the festival only to realise that he couldn’t enter (the venue). Lucknow already has a children’s film festival running parallel to the main festival. We are also considering this,” said Mr. Vidyashankar.
