India has immense filmmaking potential and enthusiasm levels here are extremely remarkable, say international documentary producers participating in an ongoing film festival here.

"In terms of the energy, the filmmaking talent here is fantastic and far better than what I see back in England. People here are really interested and engaged," said Andy Glynne, director of Documentary Filmmakers Group (DFG), a resource organisation for documentary filmmaking based in London.

"I think there's massive enthusiasm in India," agreed Philip Cox, who is also with DFG. He has produced and shot an award winning news documentary on the genocide in Darfur and appeared as an eyewitness before the UN commission on human rights in Geneva.

The duo is presently in India to screen films and conduct workshops for Open Frame, the Public Service Broadcasting Trust's weeklong film festival that began Friday.

Talking about issues ailing the documentary industry here, Glynne said India needed to become a major player in the documentary genre.

"It seems a tragedy that there are so many filmmakers around, yet there is no coordination between them. There is no development to create a sustained energetic organisation to represent their needs and the broadcast industry isn't supporting them either," he said.

Cox agreed there were issues, but said there were ways around them.

"India has this massive and rich storytelling tradition from the Mahabharata to the Upanishads, all these things you have to funnel it into your own style of documentary making for an Indian audience," he said.

"You have to find new ways of presenting old stories in formats and packages that are enjoyable and can capture people's imaginations."

Blaming the broadcasting industry for not throwing its weight behind documentary filmmakers, Glynne laid out solutions for the industry that is still in its embryonic stage.

"The first thing would be that the broadcasters themselves should take risks and become more responsible for actually putting more documentaries out there.

"Secondly, financial institutions and film agencies have to actually help and start funding documentaries.

"On the ground, as individuals we need to start creating a network to screen films, we need collectors and organisations that bring people together, screen films even on walls and start streaming them on the Internet."

While both agreed that Indian audiences were obsessed with fantasy-oriented fare regularly doled out by Bollywood, they were emphatic that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

"There is an idea that documentaries are boring or educational, that people don't enjoy it, and that it is for a select few. If the audience wants to watch Bollywood then show that first and then show your film," Cox suggested.

"The obsession with happiness and happy endings is changing across the world. One would think that the same would happen here as well," Glynne observed.

"Hopefully the obsession with fantasy oriented mythical films would be overtaken by a need for reality and the real world in India soon."

He had a suggestion for budding filmmakers who wanted to make a mark and get their work noticed. "Try to get some cinema theatre to screen your film once and publicise this among the fraternity. If it can be done once, then you can do it again and again over a sustained period of time till the genre catches on."