For anyone with a professional interest in South Asian cinema, Goa’s November Film Bazaar is an essential event.
As with other key festivals such as Cannes and Berlin, Film Bazaar represents “the market”, “the industry”, or “the business side” of film. Such markets often run alongside a public-facing festival, in Goa’s case, the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), now itself in its 50th year. This year’s opening film was Elizabeth Ekadashi, a heart-warming Marathi title just released this week across India, while the film’s producers are now hosting exclusive screenings within the halls of Film Bazaar, aimed at boosting the film’s international distribution.
Established twelve years ago, and organised by India’s National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), Film Bazaar is a trade market for film industry talent and professionals, providing a ‘converging point for buyers and sellers of film rights’ and aimed at ‘facilitating sales of world cinema in the South Asian region and the promotion of Indian Cinema in the international domain’.
Spread across several halls and lawns, people come from across India and from all continents to buy, screen and sell finished films, but moreover to “pitch” new projects, either at script stage or, for the “work in progress” section, for films which have reached their rough edit.
In this era of global culture and industry, the Film Bazaar is essential.
The Film Bazaar takes place at the Goa Marriott in Panjim, situated where the Mandovi River escapes into the Arabian Sea, flowing from a collection of springs in the Western Ghats, a nice symbol for the range of projects and stories which surface during the project market.
Film Bazaar proved its mettle most decisively in 2013, when two projects which had previously participated in Film Bazaar’s “co-production” market, achieved notable success: Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, and Gyan Correa’s The Good Road, both projects being written and directed by a debut feature filmmaker. The projects demonstrated the ability of South Asian filmmakers to tell truly universal stories. Further, they showcased the unique characteristics of India, as rich a source of settings and traditions as exists in this world. In the case of The Lunchbox, world art-house audiences were introduced to the concept of a Dabbawala and the now famous academic studies which found that less than one in a million such lunchboxes goes astray. With The Good Road, Konkani director Gina Correa made a heart-warming film in Gujarati, showing world audiences a rarely seen India through the story of a boy who is lost and then found while his family is on a holiday trip to Kutch.
Most industry execs have a list of films which they wish they’d touched. Mine is topped by The Lunchbox, which I had the opportunity to read in 2011. Gems like that don’t come along often, and like every market, the Film Bazaar serves up a mixed bag of people and projects. But if this year’s selection of pitchers bring projects with even half the heart of The Lunchbox, or something as distinctive as Bengali director Q’s “Tagore-on-acid” masterpiece Tasher Desh, or as gentle, intelligent and fulfilling as Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus (all previous attendees in Goa), then Film Bazaar will remains an essential event on the international film calendar.