Interesting Line up at IFFI Film Bazaar
The Film Bazaar in Goa, during Nov 26-29 coinciding with the 39th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), has quite a few interesting projects lined up. There are 12 feature and ten 10 non-feature film projects by filmmakers from India and abroad that will be presented in the projects section of Film Bazaar to facilitate collaborations in production and distribution.
The Feature Film section of the Co-Production market will showcase film projects by Shaji N Karun, Murali Nair, Anurag Kashyap, Ashim Ahluwalia and Rajan Khosa. Also in the section are Michael Anderson’s planned adaptation of Indra Sinha’s Booker-nominated novel Animal’s People; and Suresh Productions (Hyderabad) and A Bellyful of Dreams co-production – Tamil / Hindi bilingual Samuel Kartikeya, about a vigilante who’s goal is to cleanse society from evil.
As part of the partnership between NFDC and the European Producers Club, which brings a bunch of films that have an India connect and are looking for partners in India, the projects up for finance and other partnerships are: 1) An adaptation of Vikas Swarups’s new book Six Suspects by independent film company Starfield and producer Paul Raphael, 2) West is West, the sequel to East is East, 3) Debutant director & FTII graduate Amit Kumar’s feature debut which the UK Film Council and Yaffle Films have developed, 4) The Monsoon Shootout, about a rookie cop with an anti-extortion unit of the Mumbai Crime Branch, 5) Night in Bombay, a romantic thriller set in Bombay in 1930, adapted by John Gardyne from the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner, Louis Bromfield and to be directed by Mahesh Mathai, and 6) The adaptation of Kabuliwala, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s story, to be made by Afghani director Atiq Rahimi of Earth and Ashes fame.
Film Bazaar, in association with Binger Filmlab, Netherlands, and the Entertainment Society of Goa, will also conduct a screen-writing workshop for eight Indian screenplays. Mentors for the programme are Philippa Campbell, Sooni Taraporevala, Franz Rodenkirchen and Udayan Prasad. Screenwriters’ Lab will be coordinated by Marten Rabarts, Binger Filmlab. Eight scripts have been selected for the workshop which are Saroj Satyanarayan’s Begum Akhtari, Mangesh Joshi’s Hero, Kagaz ki Kashti by Rajan Khosa, Swaraj by Nitin Kakkar, Phiroza’s Garden by Madhuri Iyer, The Death of Madhu Ambat by Madhu Ambat, Gyan Correa’s End of the Road, and Piccolo Sood’s Catching India. The workshop will be conducted and moderated by Marten Rabarts, Binger Filmlab, Netherlands. The writers will also, during the course of the market, pitch their projects on November 28, 2008 to Film Bazaar delegates. Ido Abram will conduct pitching training sessions for the writers as also for the project applicants.
The Indian Panorama feature and non-feature films being showcased in IFFI 2008 will also be promoted in the market to identify sales opportunities for the same, NFDC has announced.
This year, NFDC has also introduced a Documentary section in the co-production Market at Film Bazaar. The selected projects under the environment theme are: 1) Green Oscar winner Mike Pandey’s project on the global disappearance of bees and the inevitable impact on the survival of the human race on the planet, and 2) Pramod Mathur’s project on melting glaciers in India and China that echoes the same fears and presents a human picture as to how the steady decline of natural resources will have far reaching effects on the globe.
Filmmakers with projects on young Indians and their choices as they work towards realising their ambitions, include 1) Preeti Mankar’s Mad About IIT – JEE which looks at the process of applying to IIT, 2) Nitin K’s Gang of 7 that follows friends from different parts of the country who met in college and migrated together to Kerala to work for an MNC, 3) AIM Television’s Killer Punch which is the journey of a female boxer in Kolkata, training for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, and 4) Ranjan Kamath’s Travels of My T- Shirt which is described as an engaging attempt to look at the winners and the losers of the policies that decide global trade practices.
At the Business Conclave being organized in the market, to be co-hosted by Screen International, the international media partners of Film Bazaar, there will be sessions and panel discussions on international and domestic film financing and distribution avenues for Indian and foreign films. The speakers include Michael Werner (Co-Chairman, Fortissimo Films), Gary Hamilton (Arclight Films), Anant Singh (Video Vision, South Africa), Manmohan Shetty (Walkwater Media), and Sunil Doshi.
A Work-in-progress Lab for filmmakers with films at rough-cut stage is also being organized with a view to reviewing selected films at the rough-cut stage in order to maximise the potential of these films festivals and international markets. The advisors of the workshop are Gary Hamilton (Managing Director, Arclight Films), Derek Malcolm (former Critic, the Guardian, UK) and Molly Stensgaard, Editor (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville.) The workshop will be moderated by Molly Stensgaard.
A master class session is being organized in collaboration with IIFW, which will focus on the body of work of eminent filmmaker Shyam Benegal.
The Hubert Bals Fund of the Rotterndam Film Festival will give an award of 5000 Euros to a project as development funding. The Entertainment Society of Goa will confer an award of Rs two lakh on the best documentary project.
Confirmed delegates for the Film Bazaar include Michael Werner (Chairman, Fortissimo Films), Gary Hamilton (MD, Arclight Films), Anant Singh (Video vision, South Africa), Emma Clarke (New Cinema Fund, UK Film Council), Claudia Steffen (Pandora Films), ICA Films (UK), MDC International (Germany), Sundance Film Festival, Flying Moon Production (Germany), Irresistible Films (Hong Kong), Unlimited Films (France), Hanway Films (UK), Razor Film Production (Germany), Salzgeber (Germany), etc.
Ido Abram (director, Binger Filmlab), formerly director, Cinemart, is consultant to Film Bazaar India this year. Abram has been a consultant to Producers’ Network, Cannes Film Market, to the European Film Market of Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Asian Film Financing Forum, and an advisor to the Dutch Film Fund.
Tags: Film Bazaar, IFFI, International Film Festival of India, nfdc
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Wow, East is East’s sequel!
Mahesh Mathai is back with Night in Bombay. Sounds very interesting with the collaborating names on it. Couldn’t find out which film project is Anurag Kashyap associated with..