Information and Broadcasting, and Youth Affairs and Sports Minister Anurag Thakur experienced the next generation of filmmaking on Thursday when he donned VR headsets to watch the music maestro A.R. Rahman's multi-sensory virtual reality film, 'Le Musk', sitting in an immersive VR chair designed by the Los Angeles-based company Positron at Cannes XR. The minister was joined by the two-time Grammy winner, Ricky Kej, and the celebrated lyricist and Censor Board chief Prasoon Joshi. Cannes XR is the segment of the Cannes Film Market focusing on cinematographic content that uses immersive technologies. "'Le Musk' is a technical masterpiece with inter-disciplinary expertise coming together from around the world," the minister commented after his immersive experience.
The minister also delivered the keynote address on 'India: The content hub of the world' at the India Forum, where he pointed out that "the advent of AI, virtual reality and immersive technology such as the metaverse presents immense possibilities to India's IT-enabled services and IT-skilled workforce." Declaring that the "land of storytellers," in the "spotlight of the cinematic world today," is "ready to engage and collaborate," the minister reiterated: "We will take all the necessary measures to speed up co-production collaborations from around the world and also offer the best locations and historical locations in India for film shoots."
Earlier, the minister began his address by saying: "I stand here before you honoured to represent a civilisation that is over 6,000 years old, a youthful nation of over 1.3 billion Indians, and the world's largest film industry that produces over 2,000 films annually." And he added: "India's red carpet presence captured the diversity of its cinematic excellence not only in terms of representation of actors and filmmakers from various languages and regions, but also the OTT platforms."