Foreign financiers and broadcasters are interested in Indian documentary filmmakers
Ally Derks remembers the day she was having a drink with Michael Moore in a small bar in Washington D.C. in 1989. Moore had just made Roger and Me, a searing documentary on the economic devastation of Flint, Michigan, after General Motors shut its plant there leaving thousands of workers jobless overnight.
“The next day, Moore was a millionaire,” says Derks, director of the International Documentary Festival, Amsterdam (IDFA), the world’s biggest documentary film festival. Warner Brothers reportedly paid $3 million for distribution rights to the film which went on to become one of the most popular documentaries ever released in American cinemas. Moore’s 2004 blockbuster Fahrenheit 9/11, a black-brush portrayal of the George Bush administration after terrorists wrecked the twin World Trade Centre Towers, made him famous across the world.
Moore, however, is said to have mortgaged his house to make Roger and Me. In many developing countries such as India the documentary filmmaker is still like the rookie Moore — unknown, surviving on passion and borrowed money and often wearing the hats of cameraman, director, editor and producer by himself. This industry exists far behind the arc lights of Bollywood, which has enchanted worldwide audiences with its three-hour stargazers. Things may be changing though. Interest in independent local documentaries is growing as foreign broadcasters and financiers search for content from Asia for curious audiences in Europe and the US.
“India and China are perceived to be the next big markets for documentary distribution and also funding destinations,” says documentary evangelist Yogesh Karikurve, whose Magus Entertainment acts as a financing-to-sales platform for independent filmmakers. The rising interest is attracting senior industry professionals from across the world to India.
“There were documentaries about India earlier too. But they were mostly made by Western filmmakers,” says Patricia Finneran of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, founded by Hollywood actor Robert Redford. “We want films made by local filmmakers from their perspective.”
Finneran and Derks are two of the many representatives of foreign financiers, broadcasters and other professionals who saw and heard 23 documentary pitches by experienced as well as budding filmmakers, some of them still in college, at the ‘Documentaries are Great’ festival in Kolkata. In its seventh year now, the festival doubles up as the only platform in Asia where filmmakers can pitch and sell ideas to financiers and broadcasters from different countries. This year it received about 300 applications from filmmakers. About 45 film ideas pitched in its previous editions got assistance from foreign financiers. “There is a critical gap of financing in India,” says Nilotpal Majumdar, dean of Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) and the driving force of DocedgeKolkata, the festival organiser. Majumdar, who studied editing at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India, says that Indian film schools do not train students in documentaries. Most filmmakers do not know where their film is headed. “You have no idea about the camera-and-character relationship.”
The skinny, soft-spoken professor started the festival in 2004 as a forum for young and inexperienced filmmakers to learn global practices from senior international professionals in focused workshops. They also help filmmakers hone the art of pitching an idea for funding and co-production.
Typically, once a commissioning editor likes an idea and trailer, he discusses it in detail with the filmmaker. He then pitches it to his organisation and also some other financiers. Most of the times about three or four financiers get together to co-produce a film. Rarely, some financiers such as Sundance also offer post-production support with editing and production labs. Sundance, which usually funds films on social and human rights issues, has a $1.2 million per year fund that has so far supported about 500 films in 62 countries. It receives most of its funding from billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates who see documentaries as an effective medium of creating awareness and debate on critical issues.
(This story appears in the 25 March, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)