Amanda Groom: Bridging The West And The East During NFDC’s Film Bazaar at IFFI 2024

Amanda Groom is the CEO of The Bridge, an organization which works in co-productions. It connects those who are working in different countries with each other, to enable projects to reach beyond a single nation’s border. Participating in this year’s Film Bazaar in Goa, the veteran media personality took some time off for a Q & A session.

Could you broadly outline what ‘The Bridge’ is all about?

Amanda Groom: The bridge is a bridge between East and West. We partner with media and entertainment companies all across Asia and we are based in the US and the UK. You could think of us as a giant connection between those different markets where we’re working co-production, co-production consultancy, especially for productions where there are elements for all markets. We work in drama and also in factual programming and also in documentaries; and of course, film, although increasingly we’re finding that the line between television drama and film are blurred.

Talking about cultural differences between countries – why do some countries manage to create content that seems to travel so easily to other cultures while others don’t?

Amanda Groom: It’s a really good question, particularly at this point in time. Look, the hard truth behind that is quite often financial stimulation and stimulus from the governments of those countries. And in particular one can say that South Korea has had great success. But one of the reasons that it has had great success is because its government has consecutively, over a number of years supported content creation. Its government’s incentives for good creatives have been clever, targeted, precise, reliable and sustained. And as a result of that, they now have a very driven industry.

So, the world thinks that certain nations are brilliantly creative, but I would argue that every nation has its brilliant creatives. The reason they are able, their people are able to punch through onto the international marketplace is because of the support and the help that they get from their nation’s governments. In South Korea for over 15 years government incentives, government support, government funding has become very useful to producers. It stimulated an entire independent creative industry in South Korea and we all know the results and how successful that has been. I see no reason why that can’t apply to other countries. In fact, other countries are increasingly noticing how this has worked in South Korea and are looking to roll out the same level of investment and stimulus for the creative industries. And to be clear, this is not about an enormous amount of money, but it’s about help and support when it’s needed in the production process for filmmakers, TV producers, be it whatever genre, be it drama, be it documentaries, be it factual programming = with the right help I believe that pretty much every nation’s creatives can punch through onto the world stage.

How does The Bridge come into play when it comes to actually bridging these cultural differences and making content from one part of the world accessible to another part of the world?

Amanda Groom: Look, I think of course the content and the story is at the centre of all of this and there are some stories which are so universally relevant that they punch up through to, and get international attention. The way that we work is to try to streamline the processes more than necessarily pick those individual stories. The East has not understood how the West works and the West certainly has not understood how the East works. And when you’re actually a program maker, you don’t have time to form relationships with every person that you need to form those relationships within every country in the hope that you might be able to do a co-production with those countries. So, we really act as a bridge in which we sort of match-make, if you like, between the productions, and what they’re doing on the ground in perhaps the UK or the US – and we match that with what producers are doing on the ground in India, in Thailand, in Korea. And the result is that it makes it easier for both East and West to actually work together.

Amanda Groom at NFDC’s Film Bazaar at IFFI 2024

Is there any example that you could cite and tell us about a particular property that you picked up from one country and managed to help it travel to other parts of the world?

Amanda Groom: Yes, yes, there is. I mean, a classic example is a British IP, Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, we took into South Korea not as Miss Marple. In fact, it was re-visioned or re-written completely but using the essential DNA of Miss Marple – it was taken and became “Ms. Ma, Nemesis” and was aired on Saturday night on SBS, one of the main terrestrial channels in South Korea. So that is one example of reworking of IP.

There are multiple examples where we pull together both sides, the production companies from South Korea and from the UK. Another example which was a Korean food program, done with both an English host and a Korean host and there is an additional allowance made for that in the filming and the result is that you get a Korean version for Korean audiences and a British version for British audiences.

What brings you to the Film Bazaar?

Amanda Groom: Well, I adore Film Bazaar. I think personally I think that India has had such a giant market of its own that it has been sustainable -it hasn’t needed to really punch through into the international market. I think now it is on the verge of doing that very, very successfully. I think there is such riches here in storytelling, talent, stories, brilliant producers, directors, actors, scripts, films, dramas. I think there are multiple ways in which these can and will reach the international market and I think Film Bazaar is a great place to do that. It really captures all of the brilliant dynamism of the Indian market and interestingly for me coming from London, it’s wonderful to be here. The London television and film industries right now have many problems. So do the industries in the US; which is why I see all of the growth happening in Asian markets. And I think that the dynamism and the action and the joy for storytelling is so vibrant. There is no doubt to me that Asia and particularly India is the growth market of the future.