Screenwriters conference in Mumbai from Dec 13

PUNE: The Film Writers' Association (FWA) has organised the Indian Screenwriters' Conference on December 13 and 14 in Mumbai. To be held at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, the conference will see the participation of around 500 screenwriters, both professional and amateurs, who will deliberate on various aspects of screenwriting, including writing for television in the post-Doordarshan era, standards of Indian screenwriting, the writer-director and writer-producer relationship, and the purpose and uniqueness of the Indian script.
The conference holds significance since it is the only platform for the writers in the film and television industry.Apart from the well-known names, some 20 students, who have opted for screenplay writing and film direction courses in the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) will be present at the conference.
Well-known and respected names from the field, including Javed Akhtar, Kamal Haasan, Ashutosh Gowariker, Rajkumar Hirani, Anurag Basu, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Prakash Jha, Jalees Sherwani, S M Vasanth, Abbas Tyrewala, Anurag Kashyap, Amole Gupte, Anjum Rajabali, Sriram Raghavan, Atul Tiwari, Shridhar Raghavan, Imteyaz Hussain, B R Ishara, Govind Nihalani, Amol Palekar, Jabbar Patel, Vinay Shukla, Rohan Sippy, Vipul Shah and Subhash Ghai, will participate at the conference.
The first edition of the screenwriters' conference was held at the FTII in 2006. It was attended by 270 screenwriters, who pressed for the union to be more active and take up initiatives to address writers' problems. It was also decided that professionally active writers should get involved with the union work and have a fresh contingent of people man the executive committee. In response to that collective plea, a fresh group did contest those elections and took over the leadership reins.
"This year, the aim is to have a contract that asserts the screenwriter's rights. We want to work out a model contract between the writer and producer," said Anjum Rajabali, course director of screenplay writing at FTII, who had organised the conference in 2006. He is also convening this year's conference.
The conference will open with an hour-long session on late Vijay Tendulkar and his contribution to Indian cinema. Chaired by Nihalani, filmmakers like Palekar, Patel and Hussain will speak on the legendary playwright and screenwriter. "I am going to talk about Tendulkar as a screenwriter, as a theatre person and as a human being. I owe him my development as a filmmaker," says Patel.
The conference will conclude with a session wherein union members get to dialogue with union leaders, to question, critique and suggest activities that ought to be part of the union's agenda. It will be chaired by Javed Akhtar, an active member of FWA's Model Contract Committee.