?Film bazaar a waste of time?

The nine-day IFFI 2004 Film Bazaar has left buyers fuming, writes Saibal Chatterjee.

An industry-driven marketplace is usually a platform where sellers meet prospective buyers. But the nine-day IFFI 2004 Film Bazaar that shuts shop today has left Manu Savani, president of Gala Entertainment Corp., a major acquirer of Indian films, fuming. He is ruing his decision to make the long haul from Orange County, California to salubrious Goa.

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"It has been a complete waste of time for me," says the man who has been in the business of buying Indian films for the North American market since 1968. "There are no products available in this Film Bazaar." He reveals that he attended an IFFI film bazaar in New Delhi two years ago. "That was infinitely better. It at least had some traffic," he recalls.

Savani suspects that none of the major filmmaking centers in India - Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata - have extended their support to the Film Bazaar in Goa. "The tent has worn a deserted look all through. Some of the stalls remained unmanned even during peak hours," he laments. "Except for the National Film Development Corporation and, to a lesser extent, Bobby Bedi's outfit, Kaleidoscope Entertainment, nobody has put films up for sale here. There are no major producers here."

Savani is, therefore, cutting short his Goa trip and heading back to Mumbai in search of buyable films. "Much greater planning has to go into the creation of the Film Bazaar," he suggests. "For one, more sellers have to be drawn here. One way of doing that would be to turn the IFFI film market into a hub where both Bollywood and Hollywood films can be bought and sold by distributors not only in India but also by those from countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand."

The family company that Savani heads was set up way back in the silent era, in 1929 to be precise, and it handled theatrical distribution of Hindi films in the US market until fairly recently. "Now we confine ourselves to buying television and DVD rights. We have the an entire range of filmmakers in our library - Satyajit Ray, Guru Dutt, B. Nagi Reddy, Devendra Goel, Gulzar and Shakti Samanta, among others. We recently bought the entire Basu Chatterjee library," Savani reveals.