BENGALURU: The Bengaluru International Short Film Festival (BISFF) is ready to grace its presence in the city again. The 13th edition will be organised in a hybrid manner with online screenings between August 3 and 13 and theatrical screenings happening at Suchitra Cine Academy and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan.
Anand Varadaraj, festival director of BISFF is stoked for this present edition as ‘BISFF is officially a teenager’. “Our focus is emphasising increasing the quality of films. When we first began, we realised everyone has the equipment, but not all can utilise it well. It’s the skill that was missing. So we created the festival with a focus on honing the skills of the filmmakers,” shares Varadaraj.
He mentions that over the past 13 years, the quality of the submissions has risen dramatically. “ The difference in submissions is incredible. Earlier, we used to receive around 100 films and 90 of them used to be bad. While those relatively better 10 had good content, they were all technically weak films. In comparison, we now get around 3,000 submissions, and to select a top 20 from them is so much more difficult,” explains Varadaraj.
This year, BISFF is putting a focus on the strength of scripts. In fact, they have invited Chaitanya Hegde, founder of Tulsea, a strategic media and content management company that represents some of the country’s top writers, directors and producers. “We invited Chaitanya because he and Tulsea have worked on improving the scripts of many acclaimed productions. They have worked on projects like Sacred Games, Mirzapur and even the most recent Kohrra. So, we thought Chaitanya would be the perfect person to explain that it’s not just about the script or the screenplay, but it is vital to develop the content in a way that fits the requirements of the producers you are pitching to and also works for the kind of audiences you are trying to gather,” elaborates Varadaraj.
On the reasons behind opting for the hybrid model, Varadaraj says, “During Covid, we couldn’t organise BISFF in person. While we were toying with the idea of an online festival, we saw that world-famous festivals are opting for the online model. So we figured why not us as well? We did not have many expectations, but we had about 50,000 hits on the website on the first attempt. That is when we began to realise the scope of the online model. We understood that we have an audience from all parts of India and other corners of the world – a matter of honour for us. So we decided to keep it hybrid.”