‘People still prefer piracy to paying for world cinema’

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

: NDTV Lumiere, the initiative to bring contemporary world cinema to India, has completed a year. “It has been encouraging with a lot of challenges,” admits Sunil Doshi, co-founder & director, NDTV Lumiere, who has gone around various festivals across the world to hand-pick films for the Indian audience. Through the year, it released 17 movies theatrically, including Three Monkeys by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the 2008 best director award at Cannes, launched 30 titles on DVD and also participated at various film festivals in India. To celebrate a year in India, it’s hosting an “Experience Cannes” festival at PVR Cinemas in Mumbai. With only two other world cinema players offering competition, the genre is still at a nascent stage in India. “We need a constant hand-holding to expand the base of the audience,” Doshi tells FE’s Sudipta Datta. Excerpts:

Lumiere is a year old… what has been the experience?

To be honest, it has been encouraging with lots of challenges. When it comes to paying to watch these lovely movies, we see a lot of resistance. Earlier, these films were screened at film festivals and that audience, which has eclectic tastes, watched it without actually having to pay for it. Getting that audience to pay has been a real learning for us. People still prefer piracy to paying to watch world cinema at multiplexes or on a TV channel or on DVD.

What about the eco-system? Do you have an audience yet?

That’s the other big factor—inculcating the sense of good cinema to a wider audience. When we want to reach out to a greater audience we come face to face with barriers like huge carriage costs. We can’t afford this, be it on cable or on the DTH platforms. But the word-of-mouth publicity is huge and that’s a positive.

Do you see the audience growing?

I see a growth in this category but we need a constant hand-holding to expand the base of the audience. The young generation is still not hungry for good cinema.

What’s the roadmap for 2009… it isn’t going to be easy, with the meltdown and so forth...