The Film Bazaar has emerged as the largest South Asian film market encouraging creative and financial collaboration between South Asian and international film communities, says Meenakshi Rao

Film Bazaar, the business and liaison hub of the international Film Festival of India, has been buzzing with activity, more so with an unprecedented boom of young Indian filmmakers finding a platform to showcase and find buyers for their mounts which rarely find multiplex openings in India and, thus, take to the Track 2 route of film festival buys and individual distributor interest from across the world.

 It is quite a revelation to attend the Film Bazaar’s unique concept event called Film Bazaar Recommends (FBR) where the young guns of world class Indian cinema, far away from Bollywood, show their independent movies and documentaries to prospective buyers and personally present a compelling pitch for their effort in three-minute talk slots attended by prospective buyers.

 The second day of this unique activity celebrated the burgeoning indie cinema movement with gusto. Celebrating the Asian Indie capsule under the Knowledge Series looked at the scope of promotion and monetisation of Indie films through sales agents, who play a critical role in choosing, acquiring, promoting and cultivating business opportunities for such films.

The session came wrapped in an eye-opening conversation between acclaimed Canadian artistic director and film critic Cameron Bailey and Michael Werner, a known Media Strategic Consultant. It was also a celebration of Michael’s glorious career of 20 years as a worldwide sales agent and he gave great insights into the Indian, Asian and World Cinema through his talk.

Bailey, on the other hand, brought in his perspective on reaching out to Asian content and Asian filmmakers, a job he did well as the Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

 As many as 12 FBR films showcased their clips followed by a pitch by each filmmaker. The session was packed by industry executives and each project was well received. The FBR section of the Viewing Room plays a crucial role in promoting films seeking gap financing, world sales distribution, buyers and other business opportunities.

 The Open Pitch culminated in 121 meetings between filmmakers and potential collaborators on the first day while 167 meetings took place on Wednesday. Even the Screenwriters’ Pitch witnessed a full house with writers getting a platform to meet and sell their scripts to industry professionals through a structured group and one-on-one meetings.

 One of the simple, humorous but full of meaning film The Summer of Miracles, centred around a child obsessed with becoming invisible got a huge round of applause from the buyers. Director Prashant and producer Nikhil are both in their 30s but have been dreaming about films since age eight. The film was a star attraction at the MAMI with its layered but subtle presentation. “People are getting the nuances and observations right nowadays. I wish my small little film initiates conversations and I need your help to power that wish,” Prashant said with a lot of humility.

Similarly, young Bangladeshi director Humana Bilkis was at the Bazaar all the way from Dhaka peddling her complex film Baganya. The film takes you through three entrapped generations of a tea garden family through a 150-year span. “The grandfather, father and son are all entrapped but in their own kind of ways,” Bilkis explains. “It is an observational documentary moving between the hope of escape from entrapment and I am looking for a sales and distribution push for my humble effort,” she said.

Indeed, the themes are unique, alluring and everyday but finding buyers is still a challenge as the audience is still emerging and popular openings difficult to find. That’s where the Film Bazaar comes in for films like The Bangle Seller which is the second project of emerging writer B Gowda who brings in his new mount on life as it unfolds in his rural patriarchal village in Karnataka.

“It is a small but moving film about their desires and secrets, inner and outer lives and dysfunctional sex within their marriage. Sanjay Mishra is at the helm with his brilliant acting,” he tells you.

This is the same production house which boasts of the unprecedented success of the much acclaimed, international festivals feted Marathi film Court, directed by a very young Chaitanya Tamhane. “We are looking for sales and distribution partners and a good film festival run. I have not seen sexuality in such a measured manner. Writer-director Gowda says, “the film is about my place and people I grew up with.”

The toast of the documentary section, meanwhile, is Bird of Dusk by filmmaker Sangeeta Dutta. It captures rarest of rare moments of Rituparno Ghosh through very many years of his filming career before he passed away. “It is a documentary. Ritu was a friend from the varsity. I was an associate director and had a memorable journey with the great. This is a capsule of 28 months work on this film. It has wonderful conversations with his crew, his personal memoirs and a complex story on a complex man,” she tells you.

 The 110-minute documentary was at the Film Bazaar looking for an international premier with hopes that her documentary gets a theatrical distribution, something which does not or very rarely happens in Indian markets.

The list goes on. Be it Chumbak by Sandeep Modi on a bipolarity of a 14-year-old Bali having the small dream of opening a ganne ka juice shop and stitches up a scam on his own in the process or Dhuh (duffer) by Manish Saini about two kids watching a magic show looking for solution of their problems — the Film Bazaar is, indeed, actively helping in pushing small but good cinema to its most important segment — buyers and audiences.

No wonder then, this Bazaar has emerged as the largest South Asian film market encouraging creative and financial collaboration between South Asian and international film communities.