| MUMBAI:
The second leg of Ficci Frames kicked off today with three stalwarts from the
industry narrating the India entertainment story. Reliance Entertainment chairman
and moderator for the session Amit Khanna was accompanied by producer and director
Shekhar Kapur and filmmaker Farhan Akhtar to highlight the critical role of the
Indian media and entertainment industry in reaching out to the world. Though our
movies have travelled globally in the past, the large domestic market in India
has largely restricted the industry to focus inward, which has resulted in a rather
ghettoized expansion of India cinema to only reach out to the Indian diaspora,
says Khanna in his opening statement. However, another deficiency
that plagues Indian cinema is in the fact that it is not being scaled up in revenue,
he adds. "Concurrently we have also seen a very vibrant television market
shaping up in India, that big global media giants like Disney, Newscorp and Sony
have bet big on its expanding potential." Prompting Kapur to add
that Hollywood is gradually on the decline as the buoyant Asian market is flexing
its muscle so much that he foresees a situation wherein Asia's consumption power
would grow to about 75 per cent of absolute revenue in the media and entertainment
sector, thus facilitating either Mumbai or Singapore to emerge as the next media
hub. Stating that entertainment is technology driven, the need of the hour would
lie in the creation of intellectual capital and this resurgence of ideas would
help transform this sector from performing largely back office functions, as it
often does especially with respect to animation. With respect of co-productions
Kapur highlighted a word of caution against large media conglomerate funding,
and what is often seen in as a Hollywood model, is standardization. Such associations
although vital as they have the financial muscle and advertising power tend to
take away the independence of a film maker. Therefore, he suggests that 'particularization'
as opposed to generalization is the way forward for the industry as he refers
to these corporates as "marketing dragons that need to be fed." Farhan
shared the same sentiment and now chooses to fund his productions on his own.
His only co-production thus far has been with UTV for Lakshya. The large capital
resources provided by behemoth corporate houses have a stretched managerial order
at the organization that create decision making problems for the filmmaker and
both Kapur and Akhtar agree that it strips the filmmaker of all freedom. To sum
up, Kapur concluded, "The more we get separated from ownership, the less
innovation occurs." | 
