Press Release 13 August 2009
How the West was won: Bollywood goes global
Event explores how the burgeoning Indian film sector can be a win-win for entire cinema industry
Despite the gloom of the contracting global economy, there exists a sector that is bucking the trend: the film industry.
Since the silent film era, people have constantly turned to the movies for inexpensive escapism during tough economic times. Now, in the deepest recession since the Great Depression it appears that this phenomenon is still holding true. And India's film industry, with its producers flush with cash from the country's recent economic boom, seems to have executed its foray into the Western film sector, where returns are high, with precise timing.
'Globalisation of Indian Cinema: Opportunities for the West', an appropriately titled event which will review India's rising film sector, will be hosted by the Centre for India & Global Business at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, on 19 September 2009.
This one-day event, which will coincide with the Cambridge Film Festival, will explore just how the Indian film industry is going global, its various engagements with Western players and its long-term goals. The Grand Partner for this event is Screen East and the North Screen Partnership. Other partners include Blood Orange Media and the Cambridge Film Trust.
The event will focus on how Bollywood is implementing transnational collaborations between Indian and Western film sectors and how a sluggish American economy has led Hollywood to court Indian film producers for funds. Recent examples include the India-based Reliance Big Entertainment's $1 billion plan to co-develop and co-produce movies with Hollywood heavy hitters such as Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks SKG to feed the growing global consumer demand.
Discussing the impact of these trends will be an impressive list of guest speakers including leading experts in the field, such as Patrick von Sychowski, COO, AdLabs, a Reliance Big Entertainment Company; Anupam Kher, acclaimed international actor and global entrepreneur; Parminder Vir OBE, Executive Producer and Media Consultant; and Partho Sen-Gupta, an independent film director. These experts will offer their experiences and consider whether these collaborations are the beginning of a marriage of two cultures, how to orchestrate transnational creative networks and the opportunities they will create for the international cinema industry.
Commenting on the event, Professor Jaideep Prabhu, the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise, Judge Business School, said: "Indian films have always enjoyed a large global audience. But it is only recently that the Indian cinema industry has begun to engage the Western film sector and vice-versa to pursue mutually beneficial partnerships. This transnational collaboration is poised to gain more momentum in coming years. That's why we at the Centre for India & Global Business are excited to host this event to explore how large, as well as independent producers and directors from India, US, and Europe, are joining forces to reshape the global creative economy."
Visit the 'Globalisation of Indian Cinema' webpages to find out more »
Notes for Editors
Judge Business School
Judge Business School is internationally recognised as one of the leading providers of innovative, intellectually challenging and practical business management education across a portfolio of undergraduate, graduate and executive programmes. As a fully integrated department of a world renowned university, Judge Business School hosts one of the largest concentrations of interdisciplinary business and management research activity in Europe.
Built on an ethos of collaboration, the School is a unique place where policy makers, regulators, industry leaders, not for profit organisations, entrepreneurs and academics can meet, interact and share ideas. Judge Business School delivers business education for the 21st networked economy, fostering collaborative leadership skills, developing communities of partners to meet the challenges of the new global business landscape.
Ranked 17th in the 2009 FT Global Rankings of business schools, 7th in the 2008 Economist Intelligence Unit Global MBA Rankings, and 3rd in the 2007 biennial Forbes Global Rankings for one year MBA programmes, the Cambridge MBA sits alongside the very best in the world. Find out more »Centre for India & Global Business (CIGB)
The Centre for India & Global Business acts as a platform for research and engagement with key partners in industry, academia and policy in India, the UK and across the world. Its primary focus is to examine India's current and future role in the global knowledge economy.Screen East / North Sea Screen Partnership
Screen East is the regional screen agency for the East of England and one of 14 delivery partners involved in the North Sea Screen Partnership (NSSP), an activity funded under the Interreg IVB North Sea Region Programme, working towards strengthening the European digital content industry and ensuring the North Sea Region obtains a significant share of a dynamic and growing market ($583B - TV and $103B - Film by 2011). The partnership also includes other local screen commissions and regional screen commissions, the education/training sector and local authorities all contributing to achieving its goal through five inter-related work packages. Individual work packages aim to support the development of existing NSR clusters in film/TV/interactive media sectors through transnational working, within and between clusters, to build capacity of companies, particularly SMEs, to compete more effectively and encourage investment outside of metropolitan areas where historically wealth creation/employment has been focused.
Find out more about the North Sea Screen Partnership »
Find out more about Screen East »Blood Orange Media
Blood Orange Media offers film, television, and multimedia production services to broadcast, corporate and academic clients. The company also provides consulting services in the areas of media strategy and global diversity management. Most recently, Blood Orange produced Indique - Big Ideas from Emerging India, a television series exploring ways in which innovation from India drives socio-economic development on the subcontinent and around the world. Created in tandem with the Centre for India & Global Business and supported by Best Buy Corp, the series will air on PBS, international airlines and Discovery Channel. Blood Orange Media is based out of Minneapolis, USA and Mumbai, India. Find out more »The Cambridge Film Trust and Cambridge Film Festival
First established in 1977, the Cambridge Film Festival has been committed to delivering high quality independent films to the widest possible audience. It has firmly established its reputation alongside London and Edinburgh as one of the UK's major film events. Since July 2007, the Festival has been run by a registered charity, the Cambridge Film Trust, as the highlight of a year-round programme of events that aim to bring challenging and provocative cinema to Cambridge and the Eastern region. Previously held in July, the Festival moved to September in 2008 and with these new dates being celebrated with a series of exciting and innovative outdoor screenings throughout Cambridge. Find out more »
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