Day 528: PFC

29 April, 2011

PFC or passionforcinema.com is a very independent site, started by a bunch of film enthusiasts from India, focused on discussions regarding cinema, be it big or small, good or bad, Indian or Foreign. And this site was pretty much the reason why I had started to make movies.

In 2008, a friend sent me a link to PFCOne, a one-minute online film festival organized by PFC. She told me that this would be great way to start making movies, after all the films need to be only a minute each. Thus I made Destination and Post-Its, both of which were selected into the top 25 films at PFCOne that year.

I would say that more than my films being appreciated there, PFC had opened a world of possibilities to me. I could read articles by established film-makers whom the site admins had managed to rope in, articles by absolute amateurs who are just taking their baby steps in the world of cinema, film reviews and interesting debates on every aspect of a film, discussions of movies that you completely fail to notice in mainstream industry but are such precious gems, posts about out of the box foreign films etc. In fact, I would say that PFC was probably the only "film school" experience I have had because it is the only place I have had interaction with so many like minded individuals all dreaming to make their mark in the limitlessly creative universe of film making.

The reason I am writing about PFC today is because, i just realized that PFC is about to be shut down or at least it is going to cease to exist in its current form. I understand that a completely new team is about to take over and they are yet to decide what to do with the site.

A few key people had been the driving force behind the site from the very beginning - people who had set aside time out of their family and career to work on the site, simply from sheer passion. I realized that all these names that I had always associated with PFC, names that immediately give me a sense of what true passion and enthusiasm are when it comes to the world of cinema, are all going to scatter away.

Honestly, I am appalled. I am not sure what went wrong and why this decision was made. I get hints of different reasons from a few of the "goodbye notes" that some of the ex-members of the admin had posted. Since the reasons are not very clear, I will not second guess anything but realizing that the site is no longer is going to be around, made me realize how lucky I was to discover it when I did.

Without PFC, Destination and Post-Its would not have happened. And without them, Mausams would not have happened.

So as I read all the goodbye notes, I feel like am indebted to this team who had taken the initiative this far. And am sure there are several others like me. This team had worked on a cause which they believed in, which in turn had made several other dreams come true, including mine.

So to the people behind PFC, for what it's worth.... thank you very much. Keep the passion alive, wherever you are, whatever you do.

472 more to go.