With Canada as the country of focus at IFFI, the delegation that visited and participated in the festival was very happy with the outcome. While interacting with the media, the crew of Canadian film ‘Meditation Park' expressed their happiness over the positive response and feedback received from the Indian government for cinematic collaboration projects. Under the audio-visual co-production scheme, the Canada booth at the Film Bazaar witnessed contracts and agreements between the two countries. With the co-production treaties being signed between the two countries, it is expected that Canada would now make India the country of focus in its film festivals.
As part of the festival, Canada organised a series of activities including workshop on co-production, a masterclass with Atom Egoyan and had a booth at Film Bazar to promote business-to-business networking opportunities for Indian and Canadian film companies. The nine day film festival featured over 15 Canadian films across different genres and categories.
When #TGLIFE asked him what Canada is taking away from the festival, the Consul General of Canada, Jordon Reeves stated that Canada is taking away a little sense of optimism, excitement and enthusiasm based on the feedback their delegation got at the festival. "We were almost 25," said Reeves, adding, "Many of our delegates were very genuinely excited with the partnerships that we had here with our Indian counterparts and the discussions carried out on the projects and business in the film industry with the ministries of both the countries."
"We also have the satisfaction that we achieved what we had come here to do. We had some great master classes and we really want to see some formal co-productions to support filmmakers from both sides and to find out what it is that is needed to make this happen. We are starting to raise the level of awareness about the treaty and I am optimistic about going forward," stated the Consul General.
Disclosing that last year Canada had 58 co-productions under the treaties with other countries but none with India, Reeves opined that he is sure that more can be done with this (Indian) market. Regarding documentaries and short films, he elaborated that Canada has a really big tradition of documentary film making. "There is Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival that takes place annually under a lot of strong documentary film makers in Canada," said Reeves.
He shared that the president of Hot Docs was recently looking for funding for initiatives and that he would like to pitch Indian documentary makers, to support them, to offer them a workshop every year and deliver master classes, training and interactions with many documentary film makers in Canada on an annual basis.
"Going forward we would like to formalise support for an initiative like that because it is also valuable. As far as diversity, inclusiveness and women empowerment is concerned, documentaries are great ways to address those social issues. Because of Netflix and some other outlets there is a growing market for documentaries in this sense, this is conscious optimism," said Reeves.
"A successful film or television starts with a great idea. So that's the first part. An idea has to be translated to a great script and there has to be a really great script to get good actors which ultimately brings in money," observed producer Stephen Hegyes.
150th anniversary of the
Canadian Confederation
2017 also marks the 150th Anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. Diversity and inclusion, reconciliation with Indigenous people, environment and youth are the major themes of the 150th Anniversary of the Canadian Confederation and it was reflected in the film package of a variety of genres that Canada had brought. The package has been curated by the Toronto International Film Festival in collaboration with Telefilm Canada.
