The Hindu Business Line : KSFDC bid to make Kerala a film production hub

Kochi, Jan. 6 Kerala State Film Development Corporation Ltd, set up with the objective of creating infrastructure for film making in the State, has initiated several innovative steps in order to make it as the hub of film making in Kerala.

The Corporation is now concentrating on new schemes and programmes for resource mobilization to finalize new investments, modernization of equipments, facilities and human resources and participatory management system to energize the staff.

Turnaround

Dr Jacob Thomas, Managing Director, KSFDC told Business Line that the steps taken in this regard during the last one year had started yielding results as 10 cinema theatres owned by the Corporation in various parts of the State has started making profits. Earlier, the Government had even thought of disposing of the loss-making theatres, he added.

During the last 30 years of its existence, many award winning movies and documentaries came out of the Chitranjali Studio of KSFDC. However, due to negligence by past managements, the Studio could not become the sole centre of Malayalam movie and during the last decade, most of the Malayalam movie making reverted to film labs in Chennai and Mumbai, he said.

Innovative steps

To reverse the trend and to bring back KSFDC and its studio as the hub of movie-making in Kerala, the Corporation had initiated innovative steps, he added.

The other resource mobilization schemes included amateur film clubs, short term courses, KSFDC as line producer of film, documentary film making for all government departments, advertisement film making etc.

KSFDC, he said, has also designed various schemes and programmes to financially support the ailing Malayalam film industry as the year 2007 was considered to be bad year for Malayalam cinema on account of lesser number of production.

According to him, the original Malayalam movie making is replaced by dubbing from Telugu movies or importing high budget Tamil and Hindi movies. It has also put several cinema theatres also in financial crisis due to non availability of Malayalam movies for screening.

Fiscal aid

He said that KSFDC is also working on a new project to extent financial assistance to film projects interrupted at various stages due to financial constraints of producers.

This project was conceived based on the recent experience of new Malayalam movies that had stopped its production during the sound processing and lab processing stage. By extending finance, such movies can be exhibited in theatres, he said.

Anything connected with the movie creates enthusiasm among people and KSFDC hopes to capitalise on this by promoting Chitranjali Studio as a prominent tourist destination thereby making it as a catalyst for revenue sharing activity in the community around, he said.

Besides, a target system of performance was started for all business units by creating business and 20 per cent of the net profit shared with the contributing staff from November last year.

A proforma for feed back collection from the customers is started to ensure quality for projects and services, he added.