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Journalism of Courage
It’s all about building a Made in India brand. And what better than Bollywood to create brand awareness of Indian industry. After automobile, engineering goods and IT, the leading industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry has decided to push India’s entertainment sector on the international filmi canvas in a big way. As a result, the coming Cannes Films Festival will witness large scale participation from Indian film companies and screening of Indian films with CII playing host to the segment at Cannes adding their organisation skills to an industry which has hitherto remained fragmented.
CII for the first time is taking direct participation from Indian companies to this highly acclaimed film festival. Nearly 12 Indian film companies have taken stalls within India pavilion including Ramoji Rao Productions, Subhash Ghai’s Mukta Arts, Popcorn (a company floated by Raveena Tandon, Sunil Shetty and Vivek Vaswani), CA, RGV Films of Ram Gopal Verma, In Network Entertainment of Hinduja group and State of Goa.
There will be a special India evening scheduled for May 19 for all who are interested to know anything and everything about the Indian film industry. The evening, co-hosted by leading actor/director Shekhar Kapur will be a tribute to Indian women by her portrayal as the real hero of Indian cinema during the last 40 years.
To charge up the evening, a special 40 minute show is being organised based on the theme of ‘the real hero of Indian cinema, the Indian heroine’. Scripted by Priya Nargis Dutt, the show will be anchored by leading industry diva Simi Garewal while Shilpa Shetty and Raveena Tandon will be the lead dancers. The promotional line of this show is ‘a mix of real and reel life’.
Talking about the India evening, CII’s deputy director general Dilip Chenoy said that “for the first time India pavilion will be located inside the main business pavilion and we want to build up this India Evening concept in a major way.”
Cannes had experienced CII’s participation last year as well, but the magnitude was very small. This time we want to strengthen and increase our presence, Chenoy said.
Earlier, while talking to The Indian Express, the newly elected President of CII, Anand Mahindra had said that “entertainment has lot of potential and we will be sharply focusing on this sector.” He said that Cannes is all about networking and we want to play up Indian film industry at a level where lot of interaction can take place between Indian and international film industry.
Shekhar Kapur is known to both the film worlds and can help to get people to attend the show, Chenoy added. The movies which are scheduled to be screened during the five day long film festival include Devdas, Jism, Leela, Chura Liya Hai Tumne Jo Kil ko, Dhund, Mission Azad, Road to Ladakh, Supari, Kaizad Gustad’s Boom, Merchant Ivory’s Divorce, Mr & Mrs Iyer by Aparna Sen, A Dog’s Day and A Story that begins At The End by Murli Nair, NFDC’s films A Slender Smile by M T Vasudevan Nair and Ode To Lost Love by Madhu Ambat, A Nation Without Women by Manish Jha, Hemanter Pakhi by Urmi Chakraborty and Tale of a Naughty Girl by Buddhadeb Dasgupta. So far, CII is estimating nearly Rs 50 lakh expense for the show and fund would also be raised from the film industry.
