There are two ways to make a film.
A. Get saleable stars, tweak the script around them, add crowd pleasers, pump in crores of publicity, bomb the market with hype and recover the money over the weekend.
B. Work on a script, find people who believe in it, figure out the markets and involve them in production, line up the distribution by identifying markets all around the world, over a period of time.
It takes very little talent and a lot of money to do it the first way. The second way is always more difficult and time-consuming but it ensures that you don’t have to compromise your vision as an artist.
Thanks to this year’s edition of National Film Development Corporation’s Film Bazaar that runs parallel to the International Film Festival of India, Goa, many young filmmakers have managed to find allies in their pursuit of pure cinema.
About 750 delegates, an equal number of buyers and sellers, including filmmakers met over a span of four days at the Marriott in Goa just to explore possibilities. This year, at least four partnerships were forged.
“We came into the market with 75 per cent funding,” says Sydney-based Indo-French filmmaker Partho Sen Gupta, whose psychological thriller Arunoday (Sunrise), starring Adil Hussain and Tannishtha Chatterjee, managed to complete financing. “When we went in there, we got a French producer, Dolce Vita Films after NFDC came on board and Infinitum Productions (U.S. and India) stepped in to fill the gap.”
The filmmaker had met with the French producers at Locarno’s Open Doors co-production market last year with this project. The four-crore Marathi film to be shot in Mumbai will go on floors in March 2013 and prepare for the festival circuit end of next year.
“The gestation period for such films is usually long because you have to build investor confidence and that happens only with time. You have to meet them in a couple of markets. You have to be patient while it’s being developed. So you build up a slate of films at different stages of production, one after the other. While we were at co-production markets this year, we managed to get development money for our next script from Holland.”
Thanks to co-production treaties between India and France, Arunoday will be distributed there as a French film. “They have quotas in distribution to protect their cinema from Hollywood. But with a co-production deal, you enter the market as a French film though the film is in Marathi. It becomes easier for a French distributor to buy Arunoday than a Gangs of Wasseypur that was an Indian film.”
Also at the Bazaar, Guneet Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment and Italy’s Dugong Production signed a deal to co-produce a documentary called An Indian Kiss , a PRIMEXCHANGE project based on a concept by Indian actor Nandana Sen and anthropologist Franco La Cecia. The documentary will discover “why there are no French kisses in Indian cinema.”
Guneet Monga who is Anurag Kashyap’s partner at Anurag Kashyap Films is an old hand at the Bazaar. Last year, she was instrumental in introducing Ship of Theseus to Fortissimo Films (who acquired it instantly). This year, she was representing multiple projects including the most-awaited Tasher Desh directed by Q, best known for the controversial and acclaimed film Gandu .
Q threw a party at the Bazaar, playing the DJ himself as a screen teased the audience with visuals from Tasher Desh . The result was a packed industry screening. There were people sitting on the floor to watch Q’s film based on Rabindranath Tagore’s play. “Tagore on acid,” as someone described after the film. Like Gandu , Tasher Desh too breaks all known conventions and definitions on what constitutes story-telling. Q’s focus is once again on the experience than the story itself. And he’s gone easy on the sex this time around.
“People were expecting another Gandu . So we didn’t do what they were expecting,” says Q. Co-produced by AKFPL and NFDC, Tasher Desh actually has a chance of a theatrical release in India. “This should get cleared by the censors. There’s nothing (objectionable) in it,” he adds confidently. After all, the Bengali film is about freedom of expression.
Umesh Kulkarni, National Award winning filmmaker of Deool and Vihir , had a successful industry screening of his production Masala . The international rights of the film were picked up by Tulsea International, Los Angeles and Mumbai-based sales agent. Umesh has a lot of projects in hand including the ready-for-release Pune-52 that premiered at the recent Mumbai Film Festival. He’s looking to sell the rights of Deool to regional markets.
“There’s very little awareness about Marathi cinema in the South. I would love it if someone could remake Deool in Tamil or Telugu. I want to organise a screening of Valu, Vihir and Deool in Chennai. But there are very few avenues like NFDC’s Film Bazaar around India,” says Umesh.
While Masala was playing at the industry screening, director Sathish Manwar of festival hit Gabricha Paus was a nervous man. His latest film Tujha Dharam Konata (What’s Your Religion) was playing in the screening room right next to it.
“This was the first-ever public screening of the film. We are just gearing to send it to festivals now,” says Sathish. This brilliant examination of the baggage from ideology and religion tugs at the heartstrings. Similarly, Anand Gandhi’s production Tumbad , the period horror drama, got a very good buzz as the director Rahi Anil Barve shared six minutes of the recently completed film at the viewing room.
Though it may be difficult to evaluate the worth of all the buzz at the Bazaar rightaway, there’s no denying that NFDC has opened doors for exciting possibilities. And a window to the new Indian cinema that once used to be associated with star-driven Bollywood.
