You owe it 2 your dreams.

Dreaming is a dangerous thing…more so when done with your eyeballs showing. It alters the norms, makes you think beyond logic (often uses a different kind of logic), overlook the sane voices and sides with the one that tugs at your heartstrings.  Ours isn’t a very different story.

Born out of a 4pm class banter, FulMarxx journey wasn’t all hunky dory. Shiladitya knew it wont be easy…the very concept of short films seemed unfeasible to many ..”too futuristic, not suitable  for Indian viewing sensibilities”… Some said.

The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations…the fear is not of the dark, but of the unseen. But dreams are crazy things; they cling onto you as if they are the only way forward; the only right path… and FulMarxx was never born to conform anyway…was it? 
7 months of toiling day-n-night, running from a sponsor to the other and putting all the acts together… on 26^th of April 2008 FulMarxx was a reality… bigger and grander than what the founders had ever imagined. Over two days, 43 entries out of a total submission of 189 shorts were screened and the quality of the films screened spoke volumes of the fest’s success. FulMarxx Shorts Fest is now India’s biggest short film festival, with a resounding international participation… and that, in the very first year of its inception…with renowned Bollywood personalities like Tanuja Chandra, Onir and Makrand Deshpande on the jury…media splashed the papers with FulMarxx bytes. When pan India visibility was unthinkable, participation from 18 countries is what it ended with!!

It was a bold start (at least we thought it was!) and a brilliant one too. India is a country in transition…for every handful of masala flicks we had a ” Iqbal”, a “Bhejafry”,” Aamir” and a “Tare zameen par”… all path breaking films in their own right. Even though the Bollywood potboilers continue to rule the roost the kafka-esque thriller NO SMOKING became hot topic for coffee time conversations.

FulMaxx is an offshoot of such changing trends. It realizes that a story doesn’t have to dwell on its audience for a whole 180 minutes to be told.  In times when more and more people desist from taking out 3 and a half hours for a flick, FulMarxx comes as a breath of fresh air. In its quest to encourage shorter formats of story telling, FulMarxx also raised a few pertinent questions…what makes a story worth telling, are there any standards? What makes it good or bad? And who decides?

As we move into the second edition of FulMarxx, here is hope that the insanity continues and a few more walls be shattered, in the discovery and promotion of the New. India will see the world with new eyes, eyes we never knew we had…and a dream lives on

See ya at the movies

FulMarxx Shorts Fest VER 2.0: 25th, 26th & 27th APRIL 2009


Submission starts 1st OCTOBER 2008

Cheers
Sherwan Ahsan


FulMarxx Shorts Fest : India’s Largest Short Film Festival