Ketan Mehta Calls for Indian Animation Caught in a ‘Vicious Cycle’ to Adopt ‘Global Mindset’ – Mumbai Festival
19.06.2024 - 09:31
/ variety.com
Naman Ramachandran Ketan Mehta, the revered Indian filmmaker who also serves as founder and chair of animation house Cosmos-Maya, known for long-running animated Nickelodeon show “Motu Patlu,” says that the global companies who operate TV channels in India create content that is local-specific and fails to resonate with international audiences. Mehta was speaking at the ongoing Mumbai International Film Festival which hosted a lively panel debate on animation. The discussion featured some of the top Iranian and Indian names in the business.
“It’s a vicious circle that we are caught in, it’s a fight that we have often,” Mehta said. “We need to break out of this. We need a creative ambition, which is greater than just our domestic market, you need a global mindset that says that you are reaching out to the whole world.
We are all global citizens now, in one way or the other, we are exposed to content from all over the world.” The filmmaker said that India is brimming over with creativity and talent, but the two main constraints in the animation market are lack of funding and distribution. It is a similar situation in Iran said “Dolphin Boy” filmmaker Mohammed Kheirandish. Iran is not big enough a territory to sustain purely locally animation production and the country’s industry relies on international sales, Kheirandish said.
Vaibhav Kumaresh, who created another long-running show “Lamput” for Cartoon Network, said that the character Lamput was not planned specifically for India or the global market. “The property itself had a very universal appeal. So we kept the storytelling and the visual design in that way,” Kumaresh said.
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