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While the 13th Mumbai Film Festival continues to pack in cine-goers, treating them to the best of World Cinema, the focus on the Business of film has garnered equal response.
This marked a great start for an excellent platform at the only Film Market in India created 'by' the industry, 'for' the industry, 'in' the industry hub - Mumbai, the Film Capital of India.
The Mumbai Film Mart saw participation from the biggest Entertainment Industry players, both from India and abroad. In the three days, over 2,000 meeting requests were received, 400 meetings were carried out face to face, while an equal number took place among the senior decision makers from leading film production houses, buyers, sellers, festival programmers and independent filmmakers as they milled around and networked with each other.
Among the many firsts, the Mart attracted all the forthcoming big ticket films such as ‘Ra One’, ‘Don 2’, ‘Rockstar’, ‘Ricky Behl v/s Ladies’, ‘The Dirty Picture’, ‘DesiBoyz’ , tabled for acquisition and distribution in the non-traditional markets for Indian Cinema in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Germany, France and Latin America.
The focus on these countries attracted leading buyers that included Huayi Brothers Media Corp. (China), NikkatsuCorp.(Japan), Happinet Corp.(Japan), Showbox (Korea), Apex Entertainment (Korea), CJ Entertainment (Korea), Top Films (Ukraine), Novo films (France), Rapid Eye (Germany), IM Global (USA), amongst many others.
Stephan Holl of Rapid Eye commented that despite having visited India numerous times, he managed to gather much more information in just two days at the Mart than he had ever done in the past and was able to conduct fruitful meetings.
Speaking about the first year of the Mumbai Film Mart, RashmiLamba, Manager, MFM said, “We are overwhelmed with the response we have got in the very first year itself. Essentially our focus on developing the Non-traditional markets for Indian Films has been a great success. The entire film industry was well represented, including talent fromMarathi Cinema.”
For the first time, Independent Filmmakers received an equal footing to promote and sell more than 50 films. ‘Dekh Indian Circus’ is in talks with Korean buyers, ‘Royal Treasure’ evoked interest for a funding pitch at the Hong Kong Film Festivalwhile ‘Arjun and Alison’ caught the eye of Novo films. A documentary filmmaker managed to leverage the Mart to garner co-production support from Polish and German attendees whilea soon to be launched Indian Media Fund identified interesting subjects. On home ground, Balaji Motion Pictures found new talent as did Shemaroo Entertainment who sat through a full screening of ‘Love, Lies and Seeta”
Feedback on the Mart has ranged from ‘excellent platform’ to ‘a one of its kind in the country’. Content with the first year’s response SanjeevLamba, CEO, Reliance Entertainment said “Our main aim was to ensure that Non-traditional markets were focused on and we are very happy with the response. The idea was to set a benchmark and make it extremely accessible to everyone in the industry, which we have managed to do. ”
With the bar on the Mumbai Film Mart set high, the organizers aim to establish the Mumbai Film Market as the crucial Film Market to be at by 2013, the 100th year of Indian Cinema