At this festival, content is king

Dia Mirza and Neha Dhupia at last year's edition of India Film Project

Bas Paanch Minute is a short film that's roughly as long as its title. It's a hilarious takedown of the Indian sense of punctuality, or lack thereof, where a chaiwallah brewing a pot of tea asks his customer to wait for five minutes before being served. This sets off a chain of events where multiple people request each other for "bas paanch minute" to get a job done, with the whole sequence coming full circle when the last person told to wait accidentally knocks that initial chaiwallah's pot down with his bike, a second before he was about to take it off the hob. And the film ends with the tea seller looking at his customer with a pathetically apologetic face, and pleading, "Bas paanch minute aur."

Ad guru Prahlad Kakkar delivers a talk at the same edition

The soundtrack of the film is also suitably comedic, and the entire effort was good enough for it to be adjudged the winning entry in the "mobile film" category of last year's edition of the India Film Project (IFP), which is purportedly Asia's largest content creation festival. And now, IFP returns this weekend with a two-day line-up that involves panel discussions, year-end reviews and screenings of the winning entries for various content creation competitions, which were held two weekends ago.

Ritam Bhatnagar

This is the eighth time that the festival will be held, and sometimes, the numbers say it all. When IFP was first kicked off in 2011, it had attracted only 600 participants across 11 cities overall. This time, a whopping 32,000 from 310 cities have signed up, with people as young as five years old to a person who's reached the ripe old age of 80 years. Does this mean that the country's content market is finally coming of age, after the nascent era of YouTube at the turn of this decade? That's what we ask Ritam Bhatnagar, IFP's founder, and he replies, "Oh, absolutely. I think that the way Internet adoption has happened, and the way online activity opened up over the past four years, means that we will witness a different kind of Net in India in the next five years. What will happen is that a lot of people who have just started consuming online content will want to produce the same in the near future. So let's say there's a kid sitting in Bareilly who has just completed his schooling. He might think, 'I have been watching YouTube videos all my life. So why don't I join a course in Jamia Millia and become a YouTuber or social media star?'"

Vikramaditya Motwane

He adds that the entire idea behind IFP is to give such people a leg-up, helping them network with the who's who of the industry and pick up expert advice from the panel discussions. These experts include truly big names such as director Vikramaditya Motwane, actor Vicky Kaushal and casting director Mukesh Chhabra. A host of Internet stars such as Bhuvan Bam and critics like Rajeev Masand will provide an added layer of wisdom. The different topics that will be dissected on stage include "How to collab: Are digital crossovers the new formula" and "Are Bollywood's wokebusters comprehending sensitivity?" So, if all that sounds like it's up your alley of interest, then check out the link posted below and sign up as an attendee for IFP - without saying, "Bas paanch minute aur."

On: October 13 and 14, 10 am
At: Nehru Centre, Dr Annie Besant Road, Worli.
Log on to: indiafilmproject.co for tickets and the full schedule
Cost: Rs 350 onwards

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