20TH ICFFI ALL SET TO ROLL OUT RED CARPET FOR INDUSTRY STALWARTS FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE

Friends, in my previous blog, I had shared details about the 20 th Golden Elephant – ICFFI, being held from November 8 to 14 at Hyderabad. Throwing more light on one of the largest and most colourful children’s film festival in the world, I would like to reiterate that the 20th Golden Elephant aims to screen high quality International children’s cinema which children may not get to see anywhere else.

No doubt, the festival promises to be a grand event and aims to attract large number of children audience along with film personalities from around the world. In 40 years, over 20 editions, this festival has only gone from strength to strength.

The last three editions for which I have had the privilege of being the festival director has seen exponential growth in terms of curatorial content and participation of best films from every nook and corner of the world. From an average of 300 to 400 entries in previous editions, I would like to inform you that while the 18th ICFFI in 2013 received 894 entries from various countries, the following edition on 2015 received 1204 entries and now, for the 20th ICFFI, we have received a phenomenal 1402 entries from 109 countries.

At CFSI, our major focus is to make this a truly international film festival for children and by children by conducting training and workshops for children in film making. This festival will consider the children’s view points and create a universal theme from children’s interest as well.

Around 40 Festival Directors of various International Children’s Film Festivals and children’s film makers from across the world will converge at the 20 th ICFFI. My main aim in taking children’s films made in India to global audience is also to bring revenues and market the content.

My efforts during the previous editions of ICFFI to make it a truly international festival has borne fruit. And, my recent travel to the world market, where I attended various film festivals and my meetings with top film makers and festival directors has added to getting more people to the festival.

I was invited to attend MIPCOM, the global market for entertainment content across all platforms, and MIP Junior, the world’s showcase for kid’s programming, held in the French town of Cannes.

Attending the BFI London Film Festival was another fruitful visit, where I met some of the well- known film makers and festival directors and had discussions for partnerships for Golden Elephant and other areas of collaboration. At the Cinekid Festival at Amsterdam, I had the opportunity to meet Sannette Naye, former CEO of Cinekid. Our mutual interest in children’s films and discussions thereof led to Naye agreeing to work wholeheartedly for enhancing the creativity of children in India through the medium of films especially the rural children, taking the Little Director’s initiative to logical conclusion. I also had a fruitful interaction with the current CEO of Cinekid, Floor van Spaendonck.

Both my earlier and recent visits have resulted in congregation of the global stakeholders including film makers and festival directors at this year’s do, which will be a maha sangam for children’s content.

Look forward to sharing more such successful partnerships and collaborations from across the globe, which helps in making top quality children’s films as well as marketing them aggressively on international platforms.

Second edition of NCFF opened to a colourful start in the pink city of Jaipur

The Birla Auditorium in the Pink City of Jaipur was decorated like a colourful bride on November 14. I was amazed to see the entire auditorium abuzz with laughter, cheer and hoots as the children expressed joy in seeing their favourite film heroes participate in the inaugural ceremony of the second edition of the National Children’s Film Festival (NCFF) in Jaipur.

Yes, it was a day to remember for me as well thousands of children from various schools across Jaipur and for the officials of Children’s Film Society, India (CFSI) and officials of Government of Rajasthan as well.

Jointly organised by CFSI and Government of Rajasthan, the three-day National Children’s Film Festival opened to a colourful start with the presence of noted Bollywood stars Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Ila Arun, Darsheel Safary, Tisca Chopra and Faisal Khan.

Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore, CFSI Chairperson Mukesh Khanna, Ad Guru Piyush Pandey and senior officials of Rajasthan Government were also present to kick start the event.

Actor Irrfan Khan, who recalled his childhood and how he became an actor, called on the children to 'keep dreaming', and said, "dreams come true when they are real."

MoS Rajyavardhan Rathore, CFSI Chairperson Mukesh Khanna, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Ila Arun, Piyush Pandey and Ramkishan Choyal  

Khan said that his interest in education became serious when he realised which was the subject he liked the most - that's Drama. “One should understand the calling from within. You should listen to the voice that comes from within and only then your journey in the chosen field becomes successful,” he informed.

Actor Anil Kapoor said that making children's films is even more challenging in today's times as children are exposed to technology and the digital medium. “They know so much about this creative art of film making. With advancement in digital technology, children are involved in making short films and documentaries. This should continue,” he said.

Kapoor also expressed happiness on workshops and open forums being organised at this festival. “Let's make the festival theme 'Make in India' become a reality by making quality films for children and by children,” he said.

Minister Rajyavardhan Rathore, who was very supportive in enabling us hold the second edition of NCFF at Jaipur, called on the children to enjoy themselves for three days and unleash their creativity in the days to come.

It was a real treat to one’s eyes to see thousands of children, accompanied by their respective teachers, had arrived in groups to witness the inaugural ceremony. The crowded auditorium resonated with laughter, cheer and screams during the various cultural programmes.

Graceful Bihu Dance

The inaugural ceremony saw some colourful performances including a vibrant dance performance by youngsters from the Terrence Dance Troupe, a colourful Bihu dance, Puppetry Show, a ventriloquism act etc. 

CFSI’s offering ‘Gauru’, directed by Ramkishan Choyal, who is also from Rajasthan was screened as the opening film of the festival after the inaugural ceremony at the auditorium. Gauru holds a special place in the hearts of the audience as the entire film is also shot in Rajasthan.

The sprawling lawns of the Birla Auditorium was decorated with colourful buntings while Rajasthani Folk dancers and musicians welcomed the guests at the entrance. The children enjoyed the movement of a joker and a man dressed as Charlie Chaplin in and out of the auditorium. In all, the three-day film festival kicked off to a colourful start.

The Workshops, Open Forums and the Kids Carnival at Jawahar Kala Kendra also drew huge crowd.

The Open Forum, with the theme, "Children's Films: The Indian Experience, Challenges, Possibilities" saw the participation of children, parents as well as teachers.

With Prof. Ujjwal K Chowdhury, Media & Education Consultant, Former Dean, Symbiois & Amity Universities moderating the Forum, the panel was chaired by CFSI Chairman Mukesh Khanna;  Abhishek Ray, Music Director, I Am Kalaam; Cyrus Dastur, Founder, Shamiana Short Film Movement and Avinash Tripathy, Jury, Rajasthan International Film Festival and me.

In all, it was an event to remember for children of Jaipur, who will get to see some of the best children’s movies during the three-day film festival.

All roads leading to National Children’s Film Festival 2016 in Jaipur

Just two more days to go. The countdown has begun for the second edition of National Children’s Film Festival, to be held in Jaipur.

In the first edition of the NCFF, my main aim was to promote film making for children. When I was the festival director for the previous film festival, The Golden Elephant, to curate a section of children’s film made in India, I saw shortage of films for children. I was scouting for good films, but the selection committee was not able to zero in on good numbers to make a separate India section at the festival. That gave me a reason to ponder whether we have that culture in the country where quality films are being made for children in the market.

The introspection also led to the fact that CFSI being the children’s film making organisation, also has the mandate to foster this kind of culture among film makers in the country.  So, we conceptualized the NCFF, the first edition of which was held in Delhi in 2014, which received a good response.

Celebration and colour at our first National Children's Film Festival 2014 in Delhi

The festival had a carnival type of ambience and children enjoyed the movies, after which the cast and crew also did a workshop with them. Many film makers also participated and parents of the children audience were also very happy with the whole experience. So, with the first edition, we set the tempo both for the children audience and their parents to make them attracted towards this exclusive content for children through these Children’s films as well as to push the community of film makers to make more films as well as utilise this platform to showcase their films and get an opportunity to interact with the audience.

The first edition of the festival had ‘Swachta’ as its theme with environmental concerns at the forefront. We are taking that moment forward in the second edition too. As we had decided that this festival should be a traveling festival and reach to the children audience and film makers both, we decided to choose Jaipur, which has a very vibrant culture and the city is also emerging as a film destination.

Jaipur is a good venue to host children’s films and towards that objective we invited entries and got very good response and we have selected around 40 films. And this time, we have the support of the state government in giving us 10 theatres across the city including multiplexes and stand-alone cinemas.

In the first edition, we screened movies in only three theatres in Delhi. We want the children to have a theatrical experience, which is the main goal for us in spreading the children’s films movement. We should have children’s films playing in the theatres, where children can walk in for free with their parents and have that great experience.

We are looking forward to around 50,000 school children participate in the film festival from Nov 14 to 16. CFSI is also holding film making workshops and open forums on the side lines of the film festival.

Come, enjoy the films and have fun!

What made #19ICFFI a landmark?

Dr Shravan Kumar looks back at the week gone by at this edition of the children’s film festival in Hyderabad

Over 2.5 lakh children saw our films
We reached out like never before as we set a new attendance record for ourselves: Over 2.5 lakh children watched the set of films we laid out in the 19^th ICFFI 2015 in Hyderabad.  The programme content and structure was widely acclaimed by the public and critics both. The fact that jury member Satish Kaushik even postponed his flight to stay back and watched every film like a student made it an absolute pleasure! So much so that everybody is already reaching out to us and our celebration in 2017.

Raising relevant questions at open forums
The open forums at the 19^th ICFFI 2015 had a lot of interesting debates – be it with policy makers or theater people or even the film makers who brought up very relevant queries and concerns. We ensured that all questions found answers or atleast were documented to be reviewed by those concered.

Be it 360 degree marketing of films, where we learnt lessons from the commercial success of Chotta Bheem through Samir Jain of Green Gold or film maker Nishit Takia who shared his difficulties faced on distribution in India: “It is truly difficult to get screens in India. Our film in China was screened in 12000 screens simultaneously. Children’s cinema hasn’t taken a form of paid entertainment in India.” And I understood his heartbreaking dilemma!

Moderator and curator Ashish S K – a film maker in his own right rounded it aptly when he said the digital platform is changing the way Indian content is being consumed and on the type of screen “We have to now make episodes/videos for 7 minutes rather 22 minutes to hold their attention!”

Making workshops count!

The workshops held for 5 days at Jawahar Bal Bhavan brought in the best quality of teachers to the forums. As I did my rounds, I was happy to watch the progress and interact with the young children delighted at this opportunity. And also glad to have an answer to a question raised by the Class X student of Mahboobia Girls Government School in Hyderabad – Bushra Begum. Bushra who is in love with animation, was thrilled with the animation workshop set out in our schedule, practicing even after class ended and even sharing her lessons with her neighbours and friends. She asked me with much concern, “How can I continue this learning after the workshop?” Luckily, I was able to reach out to the IT secretary in Telangana to look at a revised way to include animation in the school curriculum. And this truly is the power of these interactions – where the voice of the children can reach those in power easily without getting lost in translation.

The Jury fought with us for more awards!
The members of the jury fought with us to award more films and people. They complained that some of the films, especially in Live Action category deserved more awards. We had to double the number of awards in the Little Director’s Category! They were persistent in their endeavor hounding me and the team every day last week to give out more awards. “How can we do our duty and be fair to the content and the outstanding movies we have seen?” was what I heard from every single jury member.  It was truly the final salute to the excellent curation of films done internally by the CFSI team who watched 1204 submissions to pull out the best. Hear film director Satish Kaushik also share his experience on video

The celebration continues
The number of requests received from people all over the country for us to ensure they see the movies is phenomenal. Our plan at CFSI is to start with Kashmir and take the films and the workshops to Kanyakumari – because the celebration of films and the celebration of children can never end!

Hope you will join us too in them and spread the mandate of promoting every child's right to entertainment across the country. 

Clicking with Children’s Content!

It’s never been more important than now to make films for children. As young minds all over- be it in a metro city or in a village in India, or even one in another country – children are being exposed to newer channels of entertainment than ever before. Very little of this content has been created only keeping their needs in mind.

Adding layers of complexity to this entertainment is the environment around them – some of it holding out strains of dysfunctional families, others dealing with an environment of stress, strife and difficulty. Competitions in schools keeps things busy and the race of marks is making childhood more fraught than enjoyable.

Which is why stories told for children, by the children and now also of children remains our biggest focus at CFSI. Every child in the world needs to find his story told or find his voice echoed on screen. If we at CFSI are able to execute that – bring disparate voices from across the world to expose our children to the best of content – we would have achieved our milestone of creating, showcasing and bringing regular content for children.  

Our attempt with the 19thGolden Elephant Festival is also to move beyond the ordinary. Which is why our theme is “Digital India” – keeping in touch with the digital revolution now touching children’s lives and also staying abreast with the times. The idea remains to speak in their language, engage with them through innovative and diverse films – produced nationally and internationally.

This explains our desire to also curate the films internally. Given our sixty years of in-depth understanding through our activities around creating & disseminating wholesome entertainment for children, this year we have decided to undertake this ourselves after different stages of selection from over 1200 entries received from 80 countries via the digital platform. 

Furthermore, we have entered into a direct agreement with YouTube to upload CFSI films on their platform, so as to reach a wider, global audience. Our play through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter has also become stronger, only so that we can be on any big or small screen that can entertain a child!

Here’s hoping they click to get through right to us. That will be our biggest endeavor.

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SHRAVAN KUMAR

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER