Big boost for small films

Small Indian movie producers will soon find a platform to release their films internationally, like big banners, but with less fanfare, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 19, 2007, 03:46:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Small Indian movie producers will soon find a platform to release their films internationally, like big banners, but with less fanfare.

This will happen once the Film and Television Producers Guild of India, Indian Music Industry and South Asian Music Company sign a memorandum of association with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for the setting up of an Export Promotion Council for the entertainment industry. A draft of the MoA was presented to the ministry earlier this week. The I&B ministry expects the MoA to be signed by the end of the year.

Secretary general of the guild, Supran Sen, told

the council will help establish a market for Indian movies abroad and bring more entertainment business into India. "Smaller producers and regional cinema would be able to showcase their work in the new emerging markets of Malaysia, Singapore and Europe and at various international film festivals," he said.

The industry believes the council could help in tackling a major concern of international piracy syndicates, which cause losses of crores of rupees to the industry. "A huge piracy network operates from outside Indian borders. The only solution is inter-governmental action. The council can help the government tackle the issue," said SL Saha, joint secretary in the Federation of South Asian Music Companies.

Even though prices of digital compact discs have gone down, the industry believes piracy syndicates have adapted to the new situation and are now selling pirated music and films at extremely cheap prices. The issue of piracy of films and music on websites has also been raised with the I&B ministry.

Industry representatives met senior I&B ministry officials earlier this week and sought the government's intervention in tackling piracy. Ministry officials said the government would soon formulate a comprehensive law on piracy, covering all mediums, including websites and mobile phones.

The ministry believes the council will provide a fillip to emerging areas of the entertainment industry such as animation, video games, gaming, radio programmes and online entertainment, in which the presence of Indian players is very small.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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