PANAJI: The annual Film Bazaar, organised by the National Film Development Corporation, concluded with several countries such as the United Kingdom showing interest films produced by the Corporation.

There was also considerable progress in co-production discussions with foreign filmmakers, with nine Indian films shortlisted for this purpose.

The Bazaar was held for three days to coincide with the 40th International Film Festival of India which commenced on 23 November and will continue till 3 December. About 200 Indian and foreign films are being screened in various sections.

NFDC managing director Nina Lath Gupta told indiantelevision.com that there had been sales to the United Kingdom and talks had been initiated with some others. She also said the NFDC had for the first time made forays into new and non-traditional markets as well. She said the results were being processed and would be in a position to give more details later.

Gupta said co-production projects take longer to finalise as those who come here have to hold discussions with others back home.

She claimed that there was ‘a world of difference’ compared to last year’s budget because it was more business-oriented this time.

Answering another question, she admitted that the NFDC had stopped production for many years but had re-entered this field in 2007 and had so far made eight films in different languages.

The Bazaar was attended by more than 350 delegates from 20 countries spread over 3 days and witnessed some successful meetings of filmmakers with International and National co-producers, bankers, agents and other potential financiers from India and abroad in the Co- Production Segment.

Prominent Exhibitors like Pixion, Toonz Animation, Hong Kong Trade Development Corporation, Magic Lantern Foundations and others participated in the Bazaar. International Partners like Europa Cinemas, American Film Institute’s project 20/20, CineMart, BingerLab, Locarno Film Festival and others also had an active presence in the Bazaar.

The NFDC Knowledge Series was launched in Film Bazaar this Year and included discussions with Mani Ratnam, Om Puri , Manish Acharya, Prashant Pethe and presentations by Dina Dattani on Decoding India’s audio visual on production treaties with UK, Brazil, Germany, Italy and France. This included International Film Financing by Juliane Schulze, Partner in Peacefulfish, and Digital Distribution on web and mobile platforms by Janet Brown of Cinetic Rights Management.

Representatives from international film festivals like Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique and Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles interacted with delegates in connection with the forthcoming editions of these festivals.

The Bazaar was aimed to create opportunities for networking and business for producers, filmmakers and distributors from across the world.

The feature films selected this year for the Co production Market were ‘Ceylon’ by Santosh Sivan; ‘I Am’ by Onirban; ‘Inside-Out’ by Ketan Mehta; ‘Keep off the Grass’ by Ben Rekhi; ‘Manjunath’ by Sandeep Varma; ‘Obsession’ by Suman Ghosh, ‘The Return of the Tiger’ by Mike Pandey; ‘The Virgin Goddess’ by K.N.T. Sastry, and ‘Twosome’ by Siddharth Sinha.