My time at IIFTC
I visited the India International Film & Tourism Conclave and got to meet lots of people!
The 10th edition of the India International Film & Tourism Conclave kickstarted on the 12th of October 2023 at the Westin Garden City Hotel in Goregaon, Mumbai. I was lucky to be invited by Dr. Bhuvan Lall as a guest. I entered the conclave without knowing what to expect. My thinking was that it would be like a meet-up of bollywood celebs and there might be some performances by actors. I couldn’t be more wrong.
As the name perhaps suggests, IIFTC is not another bollywood party disguised as a conclave. IIFTC is a congragation of tourism and film industry professionals who mean business. The event was attended by tourism department professionals of over 20 countries including Mauritius, Poland, Kazakistan, Azerbaijaan to name a few. There were also film producers from many different countries. The Indian states too were well represented with industry professionals from the Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Bengali and Hindi film industry in attendance.
I got the chance to attend 3 discussions, which were all markedly different from each other. The first was a round-table discussion of Indian film producers from across the country who had produced films shot across the globe. They deep-dived into the world of line production, local casting, travel arrangements and covered all the nitty gritties that go behind successfully shooting abroad. This discussion invited many comments from the foreigners sharing their experiences of working with Indian film industry professionals in their countries.
The 2nd and perhaps the most engaging session was titled ‘Breaking The Glass Ceiling’. Moderated by Dr. Bhuvan Lall, the session had three leading Indian Women filmmakers and two administrators from abroad talking about what it means to be a woman in the business of making films. It was inspiring to see the panelists share their success stories despite having faced multiple challenges. Writer-director Alankrita shared how she makes a certain kind of feminist films which place women at the center, and how she believes she is challenging the status-quo one film at a time. Leena Yadav & Nupur Asthana revealed how they used to be one amongst the only few women on film sets back when they started working in films. All three stressed on the fact that how it is important to encourage more and more young women to be behind the camera to change how women are shown in front of the camera. The panel noted that a lot had changed over the years, specially since OTT became popular, but there was still a long way to go before the film industry became an equal space for men and women. Dr. Bhuvan Lall masterfully steered the conversation as the panel covered many topics such as working on the set, negotiating for budget, making space in a male dominated market etc.
The next interesting session had the “Rockstar of Indian Cinema” Imtiaz Ali in conversation with Ashish Singh from Lyca Productions. Starting with a fantastic AV showcasing snippets of Imtiaz’s films, the session discussed the role of locations and scenery in his films. Imitiaz shared how for him location is a character in the film and does it’s own storytelling. He spoke about the importance of recce and how he himself travels extensively to search for the right locations for his films. Imtiaz shared the example of ‘Tamasha’ where Corsica added an amazing flavour to the film. He elaborated on the need to assimilate the local culture, especially local music in the film. He shared the trivia that ‘Highway’ was actually shot by freely travelling on the highways and stopping on the road where the location seemed suitable. I met him after the session and got a chance to tell him about how I saw the shooting of Rockstar live way back in middle school, and then we got clicked!
Post the sessions was the awards night where regional filmmakers were honoured by diplomats from different countries for the way foreign locations were depicted in their films. It truly felt that the whole world had become one as the attendees all celebrated the beauty of cinema bringing the world together.
The icing on the cake was the amazing food — both the tasty starters and the lavish dinner. I had a great time at IIFTC 2023.