MSN Entertainment
Thursday, 31 January 2008
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scenic France beckons Indian moviemakers Ile de France Film Commission, now in India for the Rendezvous with French Cinema in India programme, has laid out elaborate plans to woo Indian moviemakers to shoot their productions on any of around 1,000 locations in France. The commission also offers a subsidy in the form of a loan (support fund) of one million euros to any producer who shoots more than 50 percent of his movie in France and gets at least half the post-production work done there.
Since its inception in 2001, the Ille de France Film Commission has supported over 248 movies, spending 6,347 million euros.
This was disclosed by Olivier-Rene Veillon, executive director of the commission, while making a presentation here Tuesday of the shooting facilities available in France.
Veillon said the commission would offer its fullest cooperation to Indian production units for hassle-free movie shoots and even would like to have co-production deals with Indian producers if they came forward for such joint ventures.
"We have for long been in constant touch with Hollywood and many of its movies have been shot in France. So, we are fully aware of the needs of the Hollywood producers. This is for the first time we are making direct contacts with their Indian counterparts, courtesy the Film and Television Producers' Guild of India. Our discussions with them have been very rewarding," Veillon remarked.
He specially referred to the song and dance extravaganzas of Bollywood films and said that picturesque French landscapes would be ideal for those sequences.
The commission, he said, would arrange through the executive production companies (line producers) to provide the group dancers needed for such scenes.
France's Centre des Monuments Nationaux has also recently decided to throw open many of the heritage sites, like chateaux, abbeys, fortresses and palaces, for filming short and feature-length movies and documentaries.
Recently, some portions of Yash Raj Films' 'Jhoom Barabar Jhoom', Ritesh Sidhwani's 'Don' and I.V. Sasi's 'Manam' were shot on locations in and around Paris.
Other foreign movies shot in the Ile de France region in recent times include the Hollywood productions 'The Da Vinci Code', 'Marie Antoinette', 'The Pink Panther', 'Pink Panther 2', 'Lost in Translation' and 'National Treasure: Book of Secrets', 'Dream Links' (China), 'Flight of the Red Balloon' (Taiwan) and 'Night and Day' (South Korea).
Chennai-based producer L. Suresh has informed that he will shoot his forthcoming Tamil movie, a remake of the Amitabh Bachchan starrer 'Don', entirely in France.
La Maison, a visual effects company, also made its presentation at the event. Corinne Rufet and Francis Parny, president and vice president of the Ile de France Region, respectively, were among those who attended the presentation.
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges