The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Wednesday launched a revamped, one-stop portal called ‘India Cine Hub’ (ICH) for producers and directors to get permissions to shoot films in India, during the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. Producers and directors will be able to apply for financial incentives on the revamped portal, which has been developed in partnership with Invest India, a Section 8 company under the aegis of DPIIT. The portal was earlier called the Film Facilitation Office.
The MIB also launched Prasar Bharati’s streaming platforms, called Waves, during the event. It has three tiers of subscription plans that range from ₹30 per month to ₹999 per year.
The ICH will have two phases of implementation. In the first phase, which was launched on Wednesday, a railway application form has been added so that both domestic and international projects can apply for permission to shoot on stations and in trains. It also has a payment gateway to process the online processing of payments for different permissions.
The portal has onboarded five states thus far to give filming permissions online and will integrate all of them by phase two. During phase two, the portal will also publish a crowd-sourced directory of resources such as locations, VFX companies, animation companies, film sets, etc., that are available within India to facilitate B2B interactions. In addition, it will include an application form for Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to film at ASI locations.
Integration with central agencies such as Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA, to approve shooting with drones, and at airports) and Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) is currently under development.
As the portal matures, it will eventually allow producers and directors to sell their movies on the platform to interested distributors and the portal will act like a B2B, e-commerce hub for movie production, a senior MIB official said on the condition of anonymity.
