A bit of the old and the new

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: In July, the birth and death month of renowned Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, multiplexes across six cities are slated to hold a retrospective of some of his best films, courtesy Palador Pictures. Film activist and producer of Bheja Fry, Sunil Doshi, has watched over 1,000 films across international film festivals to “choose the best” for NDTV Lumiere, which promises to bring contemporary world cinema to India.

The recent Martin Scorsese documentary on The Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, will see a theatrical release in June. You can pick up legitimate works of the masters from Francois Truffaut to Akira Kurosawa for a fee from retailers. For world cinema buffs, it couldn’t get better than this.

And yet, four years ago, when Gautam Sikhnis, founder and MD, Palador Pictures, started his “mission on world cinema”, no one acknowledged this kind of cinema could exist as a business. Research across 12 cities and many months of hard work later, Sikhnis’ Palador created a case for people to accept it. Now, with 1,000 titles in its kitty, Sikhnis proudly proclaims “our content is best to miles”.

The good news is that a lot many players are joining the world cinema bandwagon. Think UTV. Or even NDTV. While UTV has launched its world cinema channel, propping it up with some neat marketing initiatives, like putting out ads on much-watched news channels, NDTV Lumiere will showcase world cinema across platforms, from DVD, the small screen to 70 mm.

“The content has been handpicked from fest to fest,” says Vidyuth Bhandary, general manager, NDTV Lumiere. “It’s been a labour of love of four gentlemen, Prannoy Roy, Manmohan Shetty, Samir Nair and Sunil Doshi and now it’s a business.” And yet, TV is not the only medium NDTV Lumiere will be in — “we are buying the latest content so that we can release it theatrically and on home video and new media, like mobiles or the internet.”

So, the works of new-age masters including Fatih Akin, Aki Kaurismäki, Elia Suleiman, Pedro Almodóvar, Emir Kusturica, Wong-Kar Wai will be featured alongside masters such as Fellini, Truffaut, Bergman, Louis Malle, Antonioni and Chabrol on Lumiere when it launches. “We have a combination of both old and new, about 350 plus titles. Without adding the masters to our list, the package would have been inadequate,” adds Bhandary.