Srinagar has a different energy this week. Filmmakers, actors, producers and cinema professionals have arrived in the city, turning the valley into a meeting place for Indian and international cinema.
The first International Film Festival of Jammu and Kashmir, organised by the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, runs from September 7 to 10 under the theme “Rang-e-Cinema.” It brings 135 films from 41 countries, along with some of the biggest names in Indian cinema.
The spectacle is welcome, but the opportunity behind it is far more important.
Kashmir has produced writers, actors, musicians, photographers, filmmakers and television professionals with enormous creative ability. Many found their meeting points around Srinagar’s cultural institutions, including the area around Zero Bridge and the National Conference headquarters. Television and Doordarshan once gave several of them a professional route into the wider creative world.
That ecosystem weakened over time, leaving generations of talent with ideas, scripts and performances that struggled to find an audience.
This festival can help change that story.
A film festival should leave behind more than celebrity photographs and red-carpet memories. It should help build connections that continue even after the festival ends.
A young Kashmiri filmmaker should meet a producer, a screenwriter should find a collaborator, an actor should get an audition, a cinematographer should find a project, and a local production company should win its first serious assignment.
That is where the real success of this festival will lie.
Kashmir has spent decades serving Indian cinema as a landscape. Its mountains, lakes, gardens and streets have appeared on countless screens. The next chapter should place Kashmiris behind the camera as well as in front of it.
India already demonstrates the strength of regional cinema. Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi filmmakers have built industries around language, culture and local stories. Kashmir can build its own cinematic vocabulary too.
The history exists. Mainz Raat, released in 1964, is widely recognised as the first Kashmiri feature film. Shayar-e-Kashmir Mahjoor followed in 1972, while later films and television productions kept the possibility of Kashmiri storytelling alive.
The opportunity today is larger. Streaming platforms have expanded the audience for regional stories, while digital cameras and independent production have lowered several traditional barriers to filmmaking.
Kashmir now has a festival, an audience and a room full of influential people. The next step should be a film made by Kashmir, about Kashmir, for audiences far beyond Kashmir.
That would turn a festival into a beginning.
And perhaps, years later, people will remember this week as the moment Kashmir stopped being merely a location on the screen and began claiming the screen for itself.
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