Primarily, a festival is a platform to sell films that are not meant for the mainstream audience. Cultural exchange is also important aspect of a film festival.
Basically, I have always wanted to have an art-house cinema. A cinema where we can show films that are not necessarily the current offerings on circuit and films that are not commercial.
Film festivals give less of a platform to mainstream films because they already have a market.
My offbeat choices definitely don't get me too much money because they are made in a very restrained budget. We do it because we love cinema, because we are passionate about the content and new ways of storytelling.
Mike Leigh and Ken Loach are the people I look up to. They are quality film-makers making interesting, controversial, ground-breaking movies with very little eye on the marketplace.
A lot of times, you do independent films for passion because you may even lose money doing one, but it doesn't matter.
The State Film Authority will be there for film as industry only, as is the case in all the other states, except Victoria. Victoria is moving more now into supporting non-commercial films.
I like the intimacy of independent films and I like the idea that people aren't being paid necessarily as much money as some one on a studio film.
Without the huge budgets, mainstream Bengali cinema falls flat on its face.
