Interview from Abhijit Das filmmaker from Mumbai India

Filmmaking representative from Mumbai India: Abhijit Das

You won’t find any movies from India at this years’

Sundance Film Festival (SFF) but next year might be another story. A special delegation of filmmakers from India journeyed to Utah to find out about the inner workings of cinema in America through the Sundance Film Festival experience.

“Meeting them face to face makes a huge amount of difference for us rather just sending emails which usually get ignored. It’s really helping

us over here,” said filmmaker and delegate Abhijit Das, from Mumbai, India. Das is part of a delegation from India involved with an exchange

program involving the film industry. The delegates met with festival organizers, attended workshops and held discussions with film industry

officials. Das was impressed with the intimacy of the Park City, Utah festival and found a healthy attitude among those he met.

“It’s actually the positivity of the entire industry over here. Because Indian film industry is much, much larger than what you have over

here. We make around one-thousand eight-hundred movies a year.

Those are mainstream movies I’m not even counting the documentaries and short films,” Das said in an interview at the festival.

Sundance was the fourth stop for the delegation. They had already traveled to Washington D.C., Chicago, and Miami. He believes filmmakers from India would fit in well at Sundance.

“What’s wonderful is everyone is working together. It’s kind of a revolution I see that’s happening over here. All of the artists working together in spite of all the problems that are happening across the world. There’s a huge amount of positivity in the states that we lack over there.” Das stated.

The history of filmmaking in India is not new and in fact there have been plenty of movies and great filmmakers

Interview by James Nelson in Park City Utah during Sundance