Producer Sandeep Marwah sees huge potential in the untapped Nepali film market

JESSICA RAI

KATHMANDU: A Nepali film festival in India? You scratch your head in bewilderment. Yet that is exactly what Sandeep Marwah is planning.

Marwah, who is the the President of Marwah Studios, Chairman of Media and Entertainment Commitee PHD Chamber Of Commerce and Industry, Founder Director of Asian Academy Of Film and Television and Asian School of Media Studies, was recently in the Capital for the same reason.

Indian cinema completes 100 years next year and Marwah says, “We have started to celebrate it and I am going to different states of India and other counties to develop relations through cinema, media, television, art and culture.

Holding the belief that two countries can work together through art and culture and “cinema is the ambassador of art and culture of any country”, he says they have decided to hold a Nepal Film Festival in India.

“It has been about 60 years, we have had not a single festival of Nepali films in India,” he points out.

With six to eight Nepali films, old or new, chosen by the Nepali Film Association, they are going to organise a two-day Nepali film festival in Delhi at the end of May.

And immediately after that, two more film festivals — Short Digital Films and We Care related to films on disability will come alive in Kathmandu.

Claiming that “I am a producer of largest number of short films in the world” Marwah says, “I have a huge and beautiful collection of short films which I would like to showcase in

Kathmandu.”

Since he wants to see talent grow both in India and aboard, his Marwah Studios would want to provide infrastructure facility to “some Nepali filmmakers who are keen on making short films with subjects on children’s issues free of cost”.

As he points out “Nepal is one market which is untapped” in terms of cinema, Marwah wants to offer facilities of the Noida Film City to the filmmakers of Nepal at economical rates.

“I want to make a film in a joint venture of India and Nepal,” he says adding that film is the best way to build relations.

Not only that he reveals that some of his students would be in Nepal to study the locations.

Marwah, who started with theatre, believes in working. For him, his work is “immense pleasure, spiritual activity and passion”.

“I was nothing, I had nothing. I was nowhere. Somebody helped me to get in this line. Now I am happy that the whole world knows me. One person helped me, why wouldn’t I help thousands of other people?”

His favourite actors are Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar for “their old school of thoughts and acting” and Aamir Khan and Anil Kapoor for their “good and mature acting skills”.