Bollywood Welcomes World Cinema

By Bikas Mishra • May 30th, 2008 • Filed under: Highlights, Interview, Movies, News, featured

Stars, Directors Flock to NDTV Lumière Premier of The Orphanage

It looked like a usual Bollywood premier party at Mumbai’s PVR cinema lounge last evening gleaming with the presence of stars and film directors alike. But this was not your usual line up for filmfare awards, or the premiere of a star kid debut. Instead, some of Bollywood’s biggest stars had lined up to watch the premier of a Spanish horror thriller! The Bollywood bandwagon led by none other than the Big B Amitabh Bachchan assembled together to mark the beginning of the homegrown world cinema distributor NDTV Lumière’s first theatrical release: Juan Antonio Bayona’s “The Orphanage”, multiple award winner at various international festivals.

“Elitist wall must break down, cinema must reach out to the people“-Sunil Doshi

Sunil Doshi, Director, NDTV Lumière

DearCinema took the occasion to speak to Sunil Doshi, the man behind NDTV Lumière, who has been busy watching more than four thousand films from all over the world to build his impressive 350 title library.

Sunil: Today is a great moment for me because it’s culmination of my last 12 to 15 years of indulgence in world cinema. And I’m extremely happy that we’ve created this great association between NDTV, Manmohan Shetty and myself.

Some immediate thoughts that come to my mind are that I see myself sitting in some European film festival in Bombay tonight and watching the myriads of film appearing on the dark screen and that will happen very much here in Bombay, my city.

How did your association with world cinema begin?

As a film society activist actually. I had a Malayali neighbor by the name of Mr. Narayanan, who really introduced me to world cinema. First film that I saw was Padre Padrone (1977) and I got into it. And I think I’ll continue to do it until the last breath, I feel involved into it and I think I can’t do anything better than this.

Why all of sudden corporate players are entering into world cinema segment, hitherto reserved for film societies and festivals?

I really don’t know about the other players. But I can personally tell you that we genuinely want to improve the overall environment and evolve the audience and expose them to this type of films.

I’m really certain that the culture of watching the cinema is the first step towards improving the standards of cinema in our country, whether in any form whatsoever. I can with almost certainty tell you that some of our most successful filmmakers may have no idea what the world is doing with respect to filmmaking, the grammar of cinema, the craft of making cinema, where the world is going. I think it is just an embellishment of a subject and story that we’ve really concentrated so far and (have worked on) improving the commercial elements of the film in its success.

We in a way, are very self sufficient in our thinking that we make cinema by Indians, for Indians and to Indians and about Indians, we lack a complete knowledge of working of cinema, to what level the world has moved on and progressed to bring a kind of a cinema together with possible collaborations, the creative, commercial and artistic. We’ve not really gone anyway, we still use the word crossover, we still get excited about one Harrison Ford film coming to the country. We’re still subservient to the glam sham of Hollywood cinema. We feel very good that one of our commercial films, like Om Shanti Om is programmed in Berlin film festival, not realizing that it is programming mix and they want to have a representative Indian film, not really thinking about whether this country is truly represented by such films alone or not.

And also in a way we’re so myopic because our cinema is only represented by the cinema which is churned out in Bombay there is nothing about Tamil, Malayalam, or Telugu or films in other Indian languages.

Does your definition of world cinema also encompass Indian regional cinema?

Yes, of course, I think for the want of a better word, we’ve coined this word world cinema, but ideally don’t know the manifestation and interpretation of this word to it’s entirety. Why a film of Satyajit Ray or Adoor Gopalakrishnan or G. Arvindan can not be a part of world cinema portfolio as you have from Truffaut, Chabrol, Fellini, Antonioni or Bergman because they were masters of that particular time and their cinema were celebrated throughout the world. Of course our definition of world cinema, as we understand, would encompass our own filmmakers as well.

So you will also release G. Arvindan or Adoor Gopalakrishnan films?

Yes, I had actually personally spoken to Adoor Gopalakrishnan about it. Rights of some of his films belong to one Mr. Ravi of General Pictures, who basically is a cashew nut exporter, and the conditions of the negatives are extremely bad, they are almost tattered. I really don’t know if some of his old films are even available. I had shown humongous interest in Adoor and Arvindan’s films. Arvindan’s family doesn’t know who has the rights. For example I spoke to Shaji for Piravi (The Birth) as well and there is some kind of a dispute going on between NFDC and himself and that’s why Piravi is not out in the country. So it is very easy for me to bring a film from foreign filmmaker than our own people. The condition in which the films are kept whether in terms of inventory logistics or whether in terms of rights management or disputes of copyrights, for whatever reasons they are not accessible to Indian audience except when you go to national film archives of India for the purpose of research and study.

So now onwards, you will release a new film every Friday?

Yes, we’ve a plan of releasing 60 films this year. We’ve collaborated with PVR Cinema as a first step. We’re going to release a very interesting line up, the Orphanage is the first one, Second one is Persepolis, then there is Caramel, Goodbye Bafana, Emotional Arithmetic, then there is Padre Nuestro, which got the top prize at Sundance.

We’ve the Crème de la Crème. I can assure you, that I have really personally chosen this content and have watched over four thousand films to select 350 that we’ve in our catalogue so far. And I’m very proud of the content that we’ve. Our films are not really a kind of put off cinema, they’re the kind of cinema which is of a humongous energy, invigorant, they’re outstanding films that we have picked up from all over the world.

Which new films did you acquire at Cannes this year?

I’m very proud to say that we’ve five award winners that we’ve picked up this year. The class, Delta, Snow, a Christmas Tale and there is another film….

Three Monkeys?

Yes, that makes it five. And We also have Nuri’s (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) earlier film “Climate” also in our catalogue. And we’re negotiating for Jia Zhang Ke’s 24 Cities, though it has not won a prize. we’ve an entire collection of Zhang Ke up to “Still Life” and “Dong” and we’re now going to add “24 Cities” to our library.

We’ve complete package of Fatih Akin, we’ve complete package of both the Kaurismäki brothers Aki and Mika. We’ve quite a few films from fellini and few from Antonioni. We’ve complete package of Luis Malle, we are now negotiating for Amos Gitai package as well.

So if you see we’ve a very interesting films from Scandinavian countries to other European countries, to some of the north American territories, Central Asia, Iran, we’ll have some films from Afghanistan as well. We’ve already finalized “Osama” fame Siddiq Barmak’s next one “Opium War”. We’ve Makhmalbaf’s new one, Samira Makhmalbaf’s new one. And Woody Allen film, which he’s going to start shooting soon.

We are targeting almost near simultaneous release of these films in India. So people will get to watch these films about the same time when they get released in Europe.

One of the ideas that I’m personally driving is: people who can’t go to Cannes, Berlin, Venice or Sundance , we’ll try and bring some of the celebrated and established films from these festivals to make them available on multiple platforms. People who can’t go and see it in theatres, it will be available on DVDs. In case you don’t have a DVD player, it will be available on television. We want to reach out to the people in every possible manner.

When should we expect DVD releases from NDTV Lumière?

We’re bound back by certain contractual obligation. Sometimes we’ve a hold back of three months, sometime of six weeks, four weeks. So depending on the holdbacks that we’ve, we’ll release the DVDs but in any case it will never be more than three to four months time.

Do you plan to go beyond Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore anytime sooner?

At this point of time, we’re currently sampling. We’re doing a kind of test marketing by releasing the films in three cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Of course the entire Kerala is untouched, West Bengal is untouched.

How do you plan to co-exist with film societies and festivals? Do you see them redefining their roles?

I really don’t know. I think we’ll have to work out a very interesting model in a very evolved way the way it happens in the European and American courtiers that film festival organizers work very closely and in tandem with distributors like us. We could have some special films premiered at festivals before releasing them in theatres. They will have to come out with a very innovative way.

I’m a product of film society so know it’s value. We’re trying every possible way to give out our films to various festivals like Goa, Kerala, Osian’s Cinefan, Kolkata and Mumbai and every other festival. As you will see that last year they had five or six of our films, MAMI had about seven or eight of our films. So we’ll have continuous presence. We’re leaving no stone unturned to acquire as many best films that are being awarded and celebrated at various festivals. And obviously it’s a commercial venture. We pay a lot of money to acquire these films.

Is government supportive of your initiative?

We paid 43 percent of customs duty on everything that we have bought that is ridiculous. For example censorship laws and cinematography act don’t consider the innovations and developments that cinema has made over fifty years now. So they are oblivious of what’s happening in the world. We’re in a frog-in-a-well situation and we’ve no idea what’s happening, what’s going on in the world whatsoever.

I hope the state machinery would be favorable to our initiative as well to bring the best of cinema to the country and to the people. If books can come freely, if music can come freely to our country and they could be there at everywhere, why not cinema? If reading a book is a good habit why not watching films. Because it has not been part of our culture, we’ve not been educated that way. Only cinema.

World cinema and going out to the festival has been restricted to the people who can afford it, elite people, I think that elitist wall must be broken down by such initiatives and cinema must be made more accessible to the people and I think that is one of our objectives.

How do you plan to educate newer audiences, convert them in “world cinema”?

Earlier there were no internet, no web, and no video-on-demand, no satellite television, no cable TV, I think these are newer forms a film society. Television and video are going to play a very important role in shaping the audience because we’re now going to witness another new development in our Indian society: to have a second television at home. So far we’re only talking about general entertainment channel that will play on a single home television. The moment you have a second television either in the bedroom, study room or maybe in the living room which would be dedicated to the niche taste and the niche influence of that particular audiences who could be husband, wife, parent, brother-sister or whoever they are.

So there will be one general entertainment channel that will cater to the populist wishes of the family. But then there will be people like you and me who really want to watch something like niche, it could be just about automotives or it could be just about all the gadgets or it could be all about cinema or it could be just about books. For example in the last ten years in a developed society like USA there has not been a single general entertainment channel. The only channel that has come out are very niche and very localized.

“The Orphanage” is running in PVR cinemas in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore

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