"Our bachelors may not stay engaged, but our audience does."
NEW DELHI – The FICCI Frames conference returns for a 14th edition March 12-14 in Mumbai, organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. This year’s event will see Korea as partner country, while keynote speakers include some senior names from the Western entertainment industry, such as Walt Disney International chairman Andy Bird, Walt Disney International and ABC Television Group president Anne Sweeney, Viacom Media International CEO Bob Bakish, filmmaker Mira Nair (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Life of Pi producer David Womart, among others.
The theme for Frames this year is the none-too-understated: “A Tryst with Destiny – Engaging a Billion Consumers.”
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“While the industry has made spectacular progress in the last 20 years in increasing the intensity of engagement with the Indian consumer through superior content, there is still a gap in our ability to monetize the engagement and use the resources generated to advance both access and content,” said FICCI Frames 2013 chairman and Star India CEO Uday Shan.
“FRAMES will offer an opportunity for us to put these developments into perspective, look at the larger picture and engage on such a bold and important theme,” he added.
Filmmaker Karan Johar, this year’s co-chairman said: “The media and entertainment industry has the potential to become the catalyst for social change and a force of good for every niche of society … We believe that our new agenda will be the change agent for social and commercial development, connecting a billion people, while shaping and informing their opinions.”
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FICCI Frames will include panel discussions covering topics such as the future of content consumption via digital media; film and content censorship; marketing and exhibition; television digitization and opportunities in animation; gaming; and new media.
This year’s speaker lineup includes UCLA dean Teri Schwartz, Sony Pictures Television International Networks president Andy Kaplan, Warner Bros Music vice president Seymour Stein, director Gurinder Chaddha (Bend It Like Beckham) and producer Graham Broadbent (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), among others. Leading Indian figures include filmmakers Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur) and Dibakar Banerjee (Shanghai), India’s Minister for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tiwary, Walt Disney India Studios CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur, Reliance Broadcasting CEO Tarun Katial, Fox Star Studios India CEO Vijay Singh and Viacom18 Motion Pictures CEO Vikram Malhotra, among others.
Country partner Korea is jointly planning a number of panel discussions, such as “New Business Challenges for Korea-India Co-Production,” with speakers Kim Ilho, CEO of Korea’s Ocon, producer Jonathan Hyong-Joon Kim, Vijay Shankar, managing director of Karnataka Biotechnology and Information Technology Services (KBITS), Biren Ghose, country head of Technicolor India and Ashish Kulkarni, CEO of Reliance Animation.
