Road to Cannes
Cannes, the city located in the French Riviera, has always been recognized for being one of the major cities to host international film festivals. Being one of the strongest initiators behind forming and building up of the international film fraternity, it has always been a dream for aspiring film makers and individuals, related to film making, to be at the Cannes.
The International Emerging Talent Film Association (IEFTA), which is a Monaco based organization, was here last time to explore the collaboration with the Bangladesh based film association, which focused on promoting Bangladeshi film makers abroad. The International Film Initiative of Bangladesh (IFIB), which was founded by Samia Zaman, always sought to connect films and film makers from Bangladesh with the international film fraternity. IEFTA and IFIB have come together to sponsor young and emerging film makers, from Bangladesh, a trip to the Cannes Film Festival. This intriguing opportunity brings a chance to meet influential film makers, directors and producers from all around the world.
The collaboration of these two pioneers began when Marco A. Orsini, president and founding board member of IEFTA, met Samia in the Cannes, in the previous year to the last. Since then they have agreed upon facilitating young, emerging and budding film makers to have the opportunity to be guided and groomed by the most accomplished individuals of the international film camaraderie. The goal of the program is to identify the film makers for the producer's workshop who deserve and need the supervision in order to be a complete film maker. When asked about IEFTA's role in the Dhaka to Cannes program, Marco said, “IEFTA is not selecting the film makers, it is simply supporting IFIB in facilitating the finding of the best film makers. They shall then hand the film makers over to IEFTA, where we shall ensure that the logistics, the producer's workshop, the meetings and all the schedules go according to plans. IEFTA will make sure that these film makers will have the best exposure at Cannes. Therefore the decision is being made here in Bangladesh and not by people in Monaco who are unfamiliar with the Bangladesh film market.”
There are different phases to the whole program, where the announcing of the initiative and the choosing of the right film makers are the first two phases. The next phase shall include preparing them for the trip and making sure that they are able to and have the maximum ability to absorb as much as possible, from the program. The last phase, according to both Samia and Marco, is to ensure the experiences are shared, so that others can gain from that knowledge too. They both agreed that a forum, where these selected few share their experiences and their learning, with other film makers, is extremely important; in order to ensure the continuation of the spread of the knowledge they gained in Cannes.
The stirring promise of IEFTA to fully fund the whole program for budding film makers is, in the words of Vito Corleone, “An offer you can't refuse”. And frankly it would be a crime for film makers to miss out on this opportunity.
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