India continues to draw a blank when it comes to children's cinema.

The Mumbai-headquartered Children's Film Society of India (CSFI), which completed five decades in 2005, managed to churn out just 10 films - five features and five shorts - during 2003-04, say figures put out during the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) here.

"Efforts are being made to take programmes to the northeastern states and other remote areas of the country," says the film society.

CFSI produced a feature film, "Tora", directed by Assamese filmmaker Jahnu Barua, and organised a festival of children's films in six districts of Assam. In addition, it organised a three-day filmmaking and appreciation workshop in Guwahati.

It holds its international children's film festival - at the permanent venue of Hyderabad - but the event was lacklustre this year.

"Children's films in India are now largely dependent on official efforts. If the private sector had come forward, things would have been easier," an official of the society told IANS here.

CFSI was set up in 1955, with the aim of providing "value-based entertainment" to children through films. It works for production, distribution, exhibition and promotion of children's films.

Cashing in on new technologies, CFSI also sells children's films on CDs, priced at between Rs.100 and Rs.150 per film. It has also been working with TV channels like STAR Gold, where it showed some 13 feature films in the past year, and the Doordarshan network.

Directors have meanwhile been quoted as asking CFSI to hike budgets for films, saying insufficient funds were a major deterrent.

In Goa, the venue for the IFFI for the first time, organisers have put up a workshop to train youngsters in basic filmmaking skills.

--Indo-Asian News Service