SCREENWRITERS' LAB

Application Submission for Screenwriters' Lab 2013 is now CLOSED.

The Program

In keeping with the mandate of promoting the development of the Cinemas of India, the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) conducts the Film Bazaar Screenwriters' Lab. The 2013 Lab will be in partnership with Toronto International Film Festival.

The Screenwriters’ Lab 2013 gives an opportunity to six independent screenwriters to develop their skill under the guidance of a variety of industry experts from across the globe. Through one-on-one sessions with their Mentors, the Screenwriter Fellows are advised on tools and techniques required to improve their scripts and methods to pitch the same in the international domain.

Selected screenwriters attend the first part at the Toronto International Film Festival and the second part at NFDC’s Film Bazaar, Goa.

The Screenwriters' Lab is specially re-designed to prepare screenwriters with original Indian stories for working with the international filmmaking market. 

The Screenwriters’ Lab also creates a unique opportunity for these scripts to gain a direct entry to the Film Bazaar Co-Production Market.

Revised application process -

  • Deadline has been extended. Apply before March 10, 2013 with your synopsis.
  • Short listed participants will then be asked to submit their scripts by June 2013.
  • Six participants will be declared in the month of August 2013.

Please note:

  • This Lab is open only to Indian passport holders
  • The selection process is in two parts. This is the first part of the selection procedure where participants will be shortlisted based on the submitted synopsis.
  • Participants shortlisted for the second stage will be given a scheduled duration to submit completed scripts
  • Submission via email only as a single pdf/doc file. Do not send requisite material as separate attachments. No hard copy submissions are to be sent.
  • Complete applications are to be sent to screenwriters-lab@filmbazaarindia.com
  • Application Fee for the lab is INR 1000/- only. It is payable by Demand Draft made in favour of National Film Development Corporation Ltd payable at Mumbai or by Wire Transfer, as per following details:

    Send Demand Draft to:

    Application Fee for SWL 2013 (please write project title in brackets)
    National Film Development Corporation Ltd
    6th Floor, Discovery of India Building,
    Nehru Centre
    Dr Annie Besant Road,
    Worli Mumbai 400 018

    Wire Transfer:

    STATE BANK OF INDIA
    Industrial Finance Branch
    Shivsagar Estate Worli (South)
    Mumbai 400 018
    Maharashtra
    India

    Swift Code: SBININBB 179
    IFSC Code: SBIN0004779
    Beneficiary: National Film Development Corporation Ltd.
    Account No.: 10306511493

    [Please mention 'Application Fee for Screenwriter's Lab 2013 - (please write project title in brackets)' in the payment summary | subject field]
  • Please read the Rules & Regulations carefully before submitting application

     

Rules & Regulations

FAQs

Undertaking (Downloadable word doc)

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Lab Mentors
 
Marten Rabarts 
Script Lab Head | Script Advisor
Head of Training & Development,
NFDC


Marten Rabarts entered the film industry in the mid-80's in New York as an assistant editor on the Oscar winning short Molly's Pilgrim. Several years of working freelance in production including for LA's Propaganda Films, brought him into the PolyGram Filmed Entertainment group, when he moved to London in 1990, working as TV Sales Manager for 'Manifesto', the International Sales arm of the group.

In 1992, Marten moved laterally within PFE to work as an Associate producer at Working Title Films, working with Sarah Radclyffe, Tim Bevan and Alison Owen among others on films including, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Derek Jarman's Edward II. He then developed and series-produced the film collection Red Hot On Film, a series of TV dramas dealing with the AIDS/HIV pandemic and including Idrissa Ouedraogo's Afrique Mon Afrique, with the support of international broadcasters including BBC, PBS, VPRO, ARTE and TVE, which premiered at the '95 Berlin Film Festival. He also created the documentary Serrano-A History of Sex, written and co-directed with Dutch Film-maker Brigit Hillenius.

Marten Rabarts has been resident in the Netherlands since the Mid-90's, continuing to work as a producer, screenwriter and script editor and has been Head of Studies at the Binger Film Institute from 2001-2005. In January 2006 Rabarts was named Artistic Director of the newly branded BINGER FILMLAB.

Heading the Binger Programmes since 2001, Marten Rabarts was responsible for the production/training incentive Project 10 - real stories from a free South Africa, the Binger /SABC1/NFVF narrative documentary series of films (13x1 hours) which premiered in the 2004 Sundance/Berlinale/Tribeca Film festivals. And the development/training incentive Kids n Colour for the Dutch national broadcasters which delivered 9 short films for children's television, premiered at the CineKid festival October 2004, while also actively developing feature scripts with writers and directors from across Europe and the world.

Rabarts has served as Jury member of the Berlin International Film Festival Short Film Jury, Sundance NHK prize, the fund of Torino Film Lab and Amsterdam world cinema festival among others. He also sits on a number of advisory boards, such as Torino Filmlab, and the Holland film meeting, and continues to work as a script advisor including films such as the Berlin 2010 Silver Bear winner If I wanna whistle, I whistle. After heading the Binger Filmlab as Artistic Director, Marten Rabarts is now Head of Development with the National Film Development Corporation Ltd. from July 2012 onwards.

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Bianca Taal 
Industry Advisor & Programmer, International Film Festival Rotterdam


Born in 1979, Bianca obtained a Masters degree after her studies of Film and Television at the University of Utrecht. In 2001 she started her working career in the film industry working with the International Film Festival Rotterdam as a staff member of the Hubert Bals Fund and the CineMart.

From 2005 - 2007 Bianca was co-head of the CineMart, the international co-production market of the Film Festival Rotterdam. CineMart was the first platform in its form to offer filmmakers the opportunity to launch their ideas to the international film industry and to find the right connections to get their projects financed. Consecutively Bianca has been director of the Hubert Bals Fund from April 2007 - March 2009. This fund is part of the IFFR supporting cinema from non-western countries. When heading the fund amongst others Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool and 2011 Cannes-winner Uncle Boonmee by Apichatpong Weerasethakuul were funded.


As of March 1st 2009, Bianca has taken on the position of Head of Programmes at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam from 2009-2011.

In the past few years she has served on (project) juries at festivals in amongst others Buenos Aires, Carthage, New Delhi and Mexico City and has been invited to speak on international co-productions at panels around the world. She has been a returning decision maker at European producer's workshop EAVE and annually moderates at the Producer's Network of Cannes Marche du Film.

In addition to working with Binger she was an advisor of the Dutch Film Fund from 2006 - 2010. Furthermore she is part of the CineMart selection committee, on the commission moving images of the Rotterdam Culture Council and she is a board member of the Holland Animation Festival in Utrecht. In 2011 Bianca returned to the International Film festival Rotterdam as one of their programmers and is overseeing the selection for 2012 features from Greece, Turkey, Israel, Iran and the Arab world.

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Olivia Stewart 
Script Advisor | Producer | Writer 


Olivia Stewart's career in film started in 1985 at the British Film Institute where she worked on Terence Davies' award winning Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988 International Critics Award, Cannes, the Golden Leopard, Locarno, the Critics' Prize, Toronto), and Andrew Grieve's adaptation of Bruce Chatwin's On The Black Hill. She then went on to work as Associate Producer on Charles Sturridge's Where Angels Fear To Tread, Mike Figgis' The Browning Version and a number of Film Four releases including Ladder Of Swords (1871) and Paper Mask.

In 1992 Stewart set up Three Rivers Ltd and produced Terence Davies' next three films, The Long Day Closes, The Neon Bible, starring Gena Rowlands, and The House Of Mirth, starring Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Aykroyd, Laura Linney and Antony La Paglia.

The House of Mirth was sold internationally to more than 27 countries including to Film Four in the UK, Sony Picture Classics in the US and BIM in Italy.

She also co-produced Mark Herman's Brassed Off, starring Pete Postlethwaite and Ewan McGregor, and Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Christian Bale, Toni Colette and Ewan McGregor.

All the films with which Olivia has been involved have obtained international distribution and four have been shown in Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2000 she moved to Rome, where she works as a script consultant, writer and producer. Olivia has been a member of the Jury at the Locarno Film Festival & Tehran Film Festival and has worked for the Taormina Film Festival as on stage interviewer with directors Goran Paskaljevic, Matt Dillon and Terence Davies.

Since 2008 she has worked as a script advisor for the Binger Film Lab's Writers' and Directors' courses.

In 2009 Stewart was a member of the NFDC's Works-In-Progress Committee at the Goa Film Bazaar, returning in 2010 as again a member of the Works-In-Progress Committee and also as an advisor for the NFDC / Binger Film Lab Script Workshop - the first sessions were held in conjunction with the Locarno Film Festival in August 2010, as part of the Open Doors Programme.

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Urmi Juvekar 
Manager & Script Advisor | Screenwriter 


After a long stint with regional and national theatre, Urmi Juvekar started her film career by assisting Ketan Mehta for Maya Memsaab.

In 1993, she joined Plus Channel, producing and directing non-fiction television programmes for the first satellite television channel in India. In 1998 she wrote her first feature film Darmiyaan, directed by Kalpana Lajmi. Her next feature film script was Shararat starring Abhishek Bachchan and Om Puri.

Juvekar worked as a course co-ordinator at Xavier Institute of Communication for the Film & Television Production course. She has written the story of the feature film Rules -Pyaar Ka Super Hit Formula. She directed a documentary, House of God for ZDF Arte. Her documentary Shillong Chamber Choir and the Little Home School was shown in IDFA in 2008.

Her feature film Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye directed by Dibakar Banerjee and produced by UTV won critical acclaim as well as commercial success. The film was screened in MoMA. Juvekar wrote I Am directed by Onir. The film was screened in various film festivals.

She was the Creative Producer for the feature film Love, Sex and Dhokha. The film was shown in MoMA as well as Munich Film Festival including many others. The film was a major commercial success and won critical acclaim. Her recent success includes the critically acclaimed Shanghai directed by Dibakar Banerjee and starring Kalki Koechlin, Abhay Deool & Emraan Hashmi.

Urmi Juvekar is a Lab Mentor with the Film Bazaar Screenwriters’ Lab from 2010 till date.

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Selected Lab Participants 2012

6 writers with original stories have been selected for the Screenwriters' Lab this year. This year we have -

Alankrita Shrivastava with Lipstick Under My Burkha
shares her experience at the first working session of the Screenwriters' Lab in Venice "The lab was a fantastic way...

I thoroughly enjoyed the screenwriting lab in Venice. I've never felt so treasured, valued and nurtured as a screenwriter ever before. I think this process is helping me, not only for the script that I went with but as a writer and filmmaker per se. I didn't think it's possible for so much growth to happen in just a few days, but it did. The workshop far exceeded my expectations. I would recommend it highly.

It was the people who made the workshop so meaningful. I will always cherish the encouragement, the warmth and the generous hospitality of our advisors and mentors. I felt very special. And I have returned, determined to write and make many beautiful films with depth and soul.

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Anupam Barve with The Shadow Lines

Kanu Behl with Titli (Butterfly)
"The screenwriter's lab helped me churn what's inside me..."


It pushed me to question, debate, revaluate and experience the same screenplay on a wholly different plane. An enriching process, one that I wish I, and all other serious screenwriter's could go through every time before dishing out those final drafts!

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Ruchika Oberoi with Island City
"The Screenwriter's Lab has been an extremely special experience for me...."

The mentors' care and concern for each of our projects, their invaluable insight, their warmth and their friendship will always stay with me.

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Siddharth Sinha with Dog Shooting

Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni with Antaraal (The Space Within)


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