The Jammu and Kashmir government is striving to make the scenic Union Territory an attractive destination for filmmaking once again, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said on Thursday, stressing the need to build local talent and modern post-production infrastructure.
Talking to reporters during his visit to the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) in Mumbai, the Chief Minister said that reviving the film industry in J&K requires strong institutional support and world-class training facilities.
“We are trying to make films in Jammu and Kashmir again. We are trying to restore the film industry in J&K. And if we want Jammu and Kashmir to become an attractive destination for filmmaking, then human talent and post-production capability must be created locally, and that is where a relationship with an institution like IICT becomes important for us,” Abdullah said.
The Chief Minister visited the IICT campus at the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), Mumbai, to explore avenues for institutional collaboration and student exchange between the institute and the J&K government.
He said IICT and NFDC are working towards establishing a formal relationship so that students from Jammu and Kashmir can come to Mumbai and learn modern techniques of post-production, editing, sound and lighting, among other skills.
“IICT and NFDC are establishing a formal relationship so that our students come here and learn new ways of post-production, editing, sound, light, among others,” he said.
Omar Abdullah expressed hope that in the future, the hub-and-spoke model adopted by IICT, with its main campus in Mumbai and satellite centres elsewhere, could also be extended to Jammu and Kashmir.
“It will be possible that one day IICT’s satellite campus will be established in Jammu and Kashmir. Today, what we have seen is that IICT has established magnificent infrastructure here in a very short time. We would like to see human talent being made available in the Union Territory, which will help bring down costs and also create jobs in J&K,” he added.
Notably, the hub-and-spoke model is an organisational structure with a central hub and interconnected centres.
According to IICT’s website, the institute is India’s lighthouse for AVGC-XR (Animation, VFX, Gaming, Comics and Extended Reality). It has been established with the support of the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Maharashtra government and leading industry bodies FICCI and CII.
As the national nodal organisation for AVGC-XR, IICT brings together academia, industry, technology and policy to nurture talent, drive innovation and strengthen India’s global competitiveness in creative technologies.
