The cover of the Bengal tourism department report

Cannes, May 15: Bengal has become the first state in India to invite foreign filmmakers to come and use its wide variety of locations, from “serene Santiniketan” to “memorable Murshidabad”, for their movies.

Surprising though it may seem, Bengal was the only one to respond when all states were asked by the National Film Development Corporation (NDFC) if they were keen to have their respective locations promoted at Cannes.

Minding his organisation’s stall at the Cannes Market, Raja Chhinal, a Mumbai-based deputy manager of the NFDC, told The Telegraph today: “We wrote to each and every state but West Bengal was the only state to get back and say, ‘Yes, we would like to be promoted.’”

Chhinal, who shifted from his native Nagaland to Mumbai to pursue his interest in films, said that a Prita Sarkar had responded on behalf of the tourism department of the state.

The NFDC had offered to promote locations in India because “we promote the cinema of India as a whole. We are pro-active in promoting locations in West Bengal”.

The West Bengal Tourism Department’s four-page account, “The Preferred Location to work your magic”, with a photograph of the Victoria Memorial Hall, does indeed make what the state has to offer a very attractive proposition.

Many overseas countries, including notably the UK, South Africa and Italy, which have agreed on co-production film treaties with India, plus Switzerland, Malaysia, and Thailand, where IIFA 2008 will be held, have recognised that the arrival of Bollywood crew generates useful local employment and revenue.

And now Bengal is undertaking the exercise in reverse. It says “few places can match West Bengal in location variety”.

It says it has “bewitching beaches” (Digha, Bakkhali, Shankarpur, among others), “high Himalayas” (Darjeeling, Kalimpong, “jewels nestled against the backdrop of the gorgeous eastern Himalayas”), virgin forests and rolling tea gardens, terracotta treasures at Bishnupur in Bankura, the “world’s greatest watery wilderness” in the Sunderbans and the “heritage along the Hooghly”.

Then there is the “cultural capital” of Calcutta, the city “where the colonial past and aristocratic heritage exist side by side with designer buildings, shopping malls, high technology futuristic enterprise, swank clubs, grand hotels, restaurants, sports stadium, parks and gardens and ports and jetties, underground railways and golf clubs, incredible eateries, all against the legendary Hooghly river and equally well known bridges that soar across it”.