Founded 2011 (2011) Headquarters India Website indiafilmproject.co | Founder Ritam Bhatnagar Owner Ritam Bhatnagar | |
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Industry entertainment, festival | ||
India Film Project is an annual filmmaking competition in India. Participants are given 50 hours to make a film after which a panel of judges select award winners. The competition has run each September since 2011.
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Competitors form teams and are given a common theme to which they then write a script and shoot the films. They have a free choice of locations, equipment and actors. The teams are also responsible for post-production including editing and audio.
History
India Film Project (IFP) was started by Ritam Bhatnagar in 2011 as the Ahmedabad Film Project, a competition for local filmmakers. In 2013 it was renamed the India Film Project, admitting entrants from other countries from 2014. The sixth edition held in September 2016 received entries from over 260 cities and 20 countries.
2011
The first Ahmedabad Film Project in 2011 received 86 entries from 18 cities. Filmmaker Sanjay Gadhvi was the jury member. More than 600 filmmakers participated in the event. The theme for the film making competition was 'Small things in life'. As founder Ritam says, "The motive of beginning this festival was to attract people towards filmmaking, considered a niche hobby back then". "The festival was meant to be a one-time activity, but the response was too good to make it an annual happening" he adds.
2012
The 2012 Edition saw more than 1200 filmmakers, 120 teams from 24 cities across India, competing against each other to win the title of Best Film. Well-known Filmmakers like Shoojit Sircar, Vikramaditya Motwane, Rajesh Mapuskar and Komal Nahta were part of the jury. The theme 'Ingredients of Good Living' caught well with the filmmakers with some of the best films coming out of the competition.
2013
The 2013 Edition of India Film Project saw as many as 4200+ filmmakers from 40 cities across India and neighbouring countries. The film project went online by allowing participants to shoot films from their own cities and uploading online. The project extended their filmmaking hours from 48 hours to 50 hours. The project kicked of on September 20, 2014. Versatile and award winning filmmakers like Tigmanshu Dhulia, Nikhil Advani and Bejoy Nambiar served as the jury members. For the first time in India, an online film festival was a part of 2013 edition in association with NFDC, which allowed everyone to watch their favourite films online on their computer screen. The winning films of 2013 edition received amazing response such that they were selected for Jaipur International Film Festival for special screening.
2014
The 2014 edition of India Film Project was announced on 28 May. The festival claimed to reach out to filmmakers from smaller towns and other countries through previous year's winning film screenings. The official trailer of 2014 edition was revealed on June 4, which featured a military theme. The trailer was shot with extensive use of VFX and sent out the message 'Shoot before you get shot'.
The jury for 2014 edition was announced in First week of August. The jury consisted of one of the Indian cinema's most prolific name Shyam Benegal and much acclaimed filmmakers Hansal Mehta, Omung Kumar and Umesh Shukla.
More than 8500 filmmakers participated in the edition from 85 cities across the world, mostly comprising India, Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan, Indonesia, Dubai, USA and UK. Almost 500 films were made in the challenge over the 50 hours beginning on September 12, 2014.
Axis Bank and Mountain Dew had extended support to 2014 edition so that more and more filmmakers can avail the benefit of this activity.
2015
The 2015 edition of India Film Project took the wings off festival to make it truly international. More than 14000 filmmakers are said to participate in this edition from 18 countries. The 5th season was announced on 15 May 2015 and the trailer was released on 15 June. The 2015 trailer was shot using a technique called visual illusion and garnered huge popularity amongst participants.
The festival lined up some very prominent faces of Bollywood who came forward as jury members. Two times National award winners Ketan Mehta and Onir along with film critic Raja Sen took up the mammoth task of judging 700+ films. The festival also saw its first female jury member Guneet Monga who was much appraised by the festival fans.
The festival saw huge participation from south Indian states such as Telangana, AP, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu with huge filmmaking fans flocking to the event. Apart from India, participation was seen from USA, UK, Germany, Singapore, Dubai, Australia, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Pakistan, Malaysia and other countries. The filmmaking hours started on 18 September and ended on 20 September. Considering the huge scale of festival, the award ceremony is expected to have more than 3000 people attend the gathering.
2016
IFP 2016 was the festival's first edition to be held outside Ahmedabad. The festival officially moved to Mumbai as its new home ground. The 50 hour filmmaking competition saw more than 23,600 filmmakers who took part and made 1,220 films over the weekend. The theme announced was 'Top of the World'. The jury for the festival was Madhur Bhandarkar, Nagesh Kukunoor, Sriram Raghavan and southern super director Vetrimaaran. A good number of teams also participated from China, Dubai, USA and 16 more countries.
The grand finale held on 1 October at Mumbai saw some of the best content creators of country coming together. Tanmay Bhat, Ashish Shakya and Gursimran Khamba from All India Bakchod were seen along with Vasan Bala conversing about how web content in India was catching up pace and becoming a new entertainment destination for millenials.
Kanan Gill lead a conversation on 'How not to make a film' where he took the audience view of content creation. East India Comedy was represented by Sorabh Pant, Angad Singh and Azeem Banatwala, seen conversing with Raja Sen about importance of giving offence. Nikhil Taneja from Y-Films along with Anupama Chopra, Nidhi Bisht and Sameer Saxena from The Viral Fever conversed about the anatomy of making and distributing a web-series, a rather new form of content for youngsters. Karan Talwar and Anisha Rickshawalli joined Raja Sen in discussing about Split Personality on screen. Apart from conversations, the day also included a workshop on short storytelling and short filmmaking conducted by Terribly Tiny Tales and a screening of popular web films by Pocket Films.
The evening also saw Sumeet Vyas, Nidhi Singh of Permanent Roommates fame, Naveen Kasturia, Maanvi Gagroo and Amol Parashar from The Viral Fever. The event was hosted by RJ Megha, Malishka RJ and Rishi Kapoor. The event was attended by over 8,000 film enthusiasts from around the country.
Venturing into Merchandise
On 1 May 2016, IFP launched its own store of designer and unique camera accessories. Within few days of launch, the Camera straps were reported out of stock due to very high demand. Over next couple of weeks, IFP added more products such as Lens caps, Camera bags, Lens pouches, etc. to its existing online store. These products are also sold through other portals such as Flipkart, Paytm and Amazon. Over next two years, IFP plans to expand merchandise business as a separate vertical and introduce more than 500 products with various designs.
Winners
2016
2015
2014