By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer
This is the reminder to our forgetful netas. Do you remember how Uttarakhand was born? If you have forgotten, take a walk down Mussoorie’s Mall and you will come to a place sanctified in the blood of martyrs who gave up their lives for a cause. Their cause was Separation from the Tyranny of Lowlanders. Our erstwhile bosses in UP did not understand our problems and so courageous Highlanders gave up their lives the way that the fighters gave up their lives for the Freedom of India.
Sadly, very sadly, the netas who rule our state today have gone back to being enslaved by those who still do not understand our problems. This dichotomy is what led to the disaster of Wayanad. We don’t want to face that calamity and so we must ensure that the so-called development patterns do not destroy the environment that sustains us. But is there an industry that will provide gainful employment to our people, high-tech exposure and ensure the preservation of our environment? Yes, there is, and Switzerland has found it. It is not by making chocolates or precision watches.
IT IS MAKING FILMS.
Every year Switzerland produces about 80 feature-length films. It is so popular in international film circles that it has treaties with 44 countries across Europe, North America, and Central America and regularly produces with European Union countries, Canada and Mexico. Today, the Swiss Film Industry is booming and is the topic of conversation in film circles worldwide.
Uttarakhand has a far higher potential for film shooting than Switzerland has! To start with, we have the dense tropical forests of the Terai. No Swiss location can match them.
Our mountainscapes are far more varied than theirs. Our ghost villages are made to order locales for all genres of films: Romance, Tragedy, Adventure, Science Fiction and Fantasy. We also have the advantage of drawing on the resources of our enormous indigenous film industry.
We have not mentioned the need to create a Film City. We have visited an enormous film city in South India. Much of the ground of that Film City was devoted to creating settings for films. We don’t need that because we have a great variety provided by nature. What we should specialise in is making it easy for Producers and Directors to shoot films in our unmatched locations. To publicise those settings we have to do what we have seen during one of our visits to Britain. There we saw a facility devoted entirely to projecting the various locales around which films could be shot. We should ask our local documentaries, short films and video makers to tour Uttarakhand and make short documentaries about the varied locales available in our state. These should be made available for all potential feature film producers and directors.
Most importantly, there should be a dedicated official organisation under the Chief Minister to process all requests for film shooting in our state. Such location shooting is normally facilitated by Line Producers who are experts in meeting the needs of filmmakers while shooting on location. These range all the way from handling red tape to technical glitches to local logistical facilities. The Line Producer is the ultimate trouble shooter for all location units.
The Chief Minister would need to have such an expert as a close advisor before venturing into this period of high economic potential.
The potential of the film shooting industry is enormous, particularly for our state. To start with, it does not require investment in an enormous infrastructure. Nature has provided that for free! Second, people offer unlimited opportunities for young people interested in this high-tech and glamorous industry. Thirdly, it will provide unlimited publicity for our State which will, in turn, boost both tourism and our image worldwide.
If the Government says that it does not have even the limited funds to invest in such a low cost, high potential, environment friendly initiative, then it should tap some of the funds dedicated to its latest scheme for probing into the private lives of Uttarakhandis. It should rely on the abilities of those Uttarakhandis who say, “anything the Swiss can do, we can do better!”
(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 halfhour documentaries on national TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the only travel writer who was a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.) (The opinions and thoughts expressed here reflect only the authors’ views!).
