When PVR Cinemas brought Paris, je t?aime, comprising 18 short films on the French capital by different directors from Joel and Ethan Coen, Gus Van Sant to Gurinder Chadha, to a theatre in Juhu in Mumbai in late 2006, it ran for 50 days. Cut to August 2008. An Ingmar Bergman festival at Inox multiplexes across six cities is seeing 70-80% capacity per show.
Yes, the best of world cinema is now playing at a multiplex near you. Happily so, especially if you happen to be in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. But other cities like Chennai, Pune, Chandigarh and Kolkata should be connected too soon, going by the trend.
?Audiences must be given a choice outside the Bollywood idiom,? says Gautam Sikhnis, founder and MD, Palador Pictures, which is paying tribute to Bergman through a six-city, seven-film tribute. ?What?s most encouraging about this festival is that young people are turning up to watch these old classics at the multiplex,? he adds.
But is world cinema commercially viable? ?It will take time to break even,? says trade analyst Amod Mehra, ?But there?s a positive buzz around world cinema which wasn?t there even three years ago.? Sikhnis says one has to look at it in an integrated fashion. ?We are looking at a model in which even if we don?t make money from the theatres, we make it up on either of the number of distribution mediums available now like home video, TV or Internet.?
Palador is set to launch its own television channel by the end of the year. On DVD, it has released 40 titles and has sold 2,000 titles of each on a pan-Indian level. ?We hope to touch the half-a-million mark by March 2010.? If Palador is doing a mix of classics and contemporary?it will release Martin Scorsese?s documentary on the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, in October for example ?NDTV Lumiere is trying to release films very close to their international releases.
Says Dhruvank Vaidya, senior V-P, New Ventures, NDTV Imagine: ?We have theatrical rights for 400-plus films but we will release those that are contemporary and make business sense.? Vaidya says Caramel (2007), by Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, is into its third week at PVR Juhu.
NDTV Lumiere is looking to release 30-40 films a year in theatres. ?We will release one new film every two weeks. Coming up are Far North by Asif Kapadia and Three Monkeys, which won the best director award at Cannes for Turkey?s Nuri Ceylan,? adds Vaidya. It is also launching its own TV channel soon; has tied up with http://www.jaman.com, a US-based website which specialises in movie downloads; launching a film club with Mumbai bar Zenzi on Sunday and released 10 titles, including Orphanage, on DVD.
Experts agree that now is the moment to create awareness that films from Iran, Argentina, France and many other cultures too have the potential to be seen by wide audiences. And what the players are also doing is going for an integrated approach and distribution of the films across platforms?TV, Internet, home video etc. Mehra admits that though there?s a lot of curiosity and growing awareness about world cinema, ?the multiplex release is still at its infancy? we have one or two shows and most theatres like PVR, Fame or Inox are doing it on an experimental basis?.
Fresh with the success of its TV channel exclusively for world cinema, COO World Movies COO Dilshad Master says UTV is also ready to release some of its films theatrically. ?Of our 650 films we have theatrical release rights for 30% films. Our first release is in the first week of October.? Though Master didn?t reveal the name of the film, she says UTV plans to release six films in 2008 in theatres, going up to 20-25 films subsequently. From the UTV stable, get ready to watch The Counterfeiters, The Band?s Visit, Che, Shame.
PVR Cinemas, which has been at the centre of it, will release 15-20 films in a year. Says Ranjan Singh, GM, PVR: ?There?s a gradual shift from entertainment to quality entertainment and we have got a good reception from the audience. We were releasing our films in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, but in three-four months we are also looking at other cities.? No, going to the movies, as Sikhnis puts it, needn?t be the prerogative of Bollywood freaks alone.
