The Hindu Business Line : Ticket to world cinema

Close your eyes, and count down those pleasurable moments. Open only when the credits come on, and you immerse yourself in the joy of watching a film you’ve been longing to see.

No, what you are about to catch is not the latest Bollywood masala. Nor is it your standard-issue Hollywood hungama. The time has come to bid farewell to the days when your neighbourhood multiplex or your TV screen was the repository of products rolle d out from commercial factories from the two great filmmaking nations, produced to be an easy watch.

Don’t get us wrong: we love the idea of a Tashan (Yashraj, Saif, Kareena!), or a 27 Dresses (bridesmaids, brides, true love, mmmm). But come on now, confess up, we’ve yearned for the day when we would have the option of turning to films which wouldn’t always tell us to park our brains at the check-in counter, and loop us back into the usual fare.

The wait’s over. Finally, world cinema is here, handpicked by people who know their movies, who are passionate about good cinema, and whose sole job this year is to spread the good word. Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis instead of Paap aur Punya, or Payback? Now you’re talking.

Two big players are changing, irrevocably, the movies we watch and the way we’ve watched them till now. UTV’s recently-launched channel World Movies transports you to that place where you will be able to snag the action that’s gripped audiences across the world. And very shortly, NDTV Lumiere is all set to broaden that base, by giving us movies that are an interesting, eclectic mix of festival faves and classic-and-contemporary masterpieces.

Dilshad Master

The key, according to Dilshad Master, COO, World Movies, is to provide glamorous, new-age, stylish global successes. “We figured,” she says, in a conversation at the UTV office in Noida, “that what’s worked across the world, should work here as well.” Group discussions in target segments in major metros yielded surprising results. “Even self-confessed film buffs couldn’t recognise any faces beyond the really well-known ones like, say a Tom Cruise or a Julia Roberts, so there was our workplan right in front of us: it was not just about Hollywood, it was about great movies.”

Coming soon…

The points-people on her team keep track of what’s happening in film festivals and box-office grosses around the world. So what you’ll get on World Movies are latest movies which were commercial and critical successes in the countries of their origin. All post-2000 films, because the channel is very clear it wants to appear youthful (unless, says Dilshad with a grin, it’s a Luc Besson or some other director like that, who still floats her boat).

Meanwhile, savour these, among the 400-plus titles (acquisition alone has cost $5-7 million) ready to roll out… the superb Chilean coming-of-age Machuca, and Kieslowski’s masterful Three Colours: Blue. There’s also an Absolute Master’s series which will have the Truffauts, the Antinionis and the Kurosawas (there will also be this year’s Foreign Oscar Winner Counterfeiters, which will be out in theatres by mid-summer, if all goes according to plan) as well as, at some point, a Mani Ratnam, and an Adoor. “Why not, these are world masters, aren’t they,” says Dilshad, a broadcast professional with 17 eventful years behind her, who’s embraced her new challenge full-on. Rhetorical, but right on the money.

Space for good cinema

Sunil Doshi

If UTV’s World Movies is aimed at breaking the Star Movies/ HBO habit and creating fresh global movie enthusiasts, NDTV Lumiere intends to push the boundaries. Sunil Doshi, one of the founder-members and Director, NDTV Lumiere, recounts the basics he went past, “If there’s space for classical music and good books, then why not for good cinema? We know only America through their films —that’s the extent of our film literacy; where are our Sights and Sounds, and Cahier du Cinemas?” That’s the niche he intends filling, an effort he hopes will be an instant magnet for those already in the know.

His market research findings — as opposed to the 50-60 per cent in France and Germany, only 5-7 per cent of the Indian film market belongs to Hollywood, the rest of the staggering 93-95 per cent belongs to films from Mumbai, Chennai, and other filmmaking centres — were not startlingly new.

What’s novel is where the assessment led him to; if 5-10 per cent of that Hollywood 5-7 per cent was taken over by non-Hollywood movies, that would still be a sizeable, significant number. His long association with world cinema has been honed by his years of being on festival juries, and hands-on production of the kinds of movies he always wanted to make (Santosh Sivan’s Navrasa, Rajat Kapoor’s Mixed Doubles, and Sagar Bellary’s Bheja Fry).

And because he knew that passion alone won’t work for the kind of spread he wanted to achieve, he joined hands with old-time associate Manmohan Shetty, and NDTV to create NDTV Lumiere.

He sounds completely unperturbed about being disturbed on his three-day break to Puducherry, as he talks about his plans, and how he hopes they will pan out. He is, as we speak, in talks with PVR Cinemas for distribution and exhibition nationally. For too long the stranglehold of hidebound business practices has created an impasse for an endeavour such as his.

Multiple reach

This is how Doshi’s been going at it. As the gatekeeper of the movies you will watch on Lumiere, he’s been flitting about the globe for the past year-and-a-half, sussing out hot new movies and trends (he’s watched 3,000 movies to pick out 300!), and signing up the films and filmmakers he’s excited about: Wong-Kar Wai, Abbas Kiarostami, Pedro Almodovar, Emir Kusturica. As well as such old masters as Fellini, Truffaut, Bergman, Malle and so on. After the theatrical release, those same movies will be available for home video consumption, television, and pay-per-view slots on DTH satellite networks.

And that’s where the real revolution is — the multiple platforms on which a movie can be seen, each being tailor-made for multiple kinds of audiences. Understandably, UTV, fast growing into one of the biggest media networks in India, is starting the other way round — from TV to film screens. Once the film is out on World Movies, within a few weeks you’ll be able to catch ‘key films’ in theatres, and pick them up in attractively boxed DVD sets. Says Dilshad, “Our advantage is that we can cross-promote on our sister channels.”

Other ways of creating awareness is what she calls below-the-line activities to get viewers where they are: reaching out to college students and film clubs, sms reminders to members — “these are the hotspots, not the mass media routes”.

Doshi is eyeing what he calls “the new territories of BPOs, two-television homes, the rapid proliferation of home theatre systems and movie halls which offer digital projection. Collective corporate viewing is really where it’s at”. He’s also very clear about the importance of value-adds: bring in the directors and actors for an audience interaction, bung in extra material in the DVDs, create forums for discussions, and you’ve got an irresistible hook.

It’s not all smooth sailing, though. Apart from the very real problem of getting enough eyeballs, there are a couple of other bugbears all purveyors of world movies have to handle. Archaic censor laws can deprive you of crucial content deemed unsuitable for Indian eyes. Plus there’s the whole thing about subtitles: it adds enormously to the import and buying costs; it’s also, more importantly, a habit viewers have to inculcate.

But both Doshi and Dilshad are confident that they will get past these hurdles. “I’d actually be happy to subtitle even English films, given that there are so many ways of speaking English around the world; you can’t immediately understand a Scottish, or an Irish accent. As for dubbing, I’m not saying never, but subtitling definitely makes the channel sticky,” says Dilshad. Doshi will not dub, unless it’s an animation movie. “We will provide subtitles in English, and local Indian languages.”

Long ago, when Star Movies was the only game in town, they used to subtitle all their movies. One film had this priceless line, which I have preserved for posterity: ‘way to go’ became ‘jaane ka raasta’. For the newly-opened universe of world movies for the Indian audiences, this is both the ‘jaane ka raasta’, as well as ‘way to go’.

Lead on.

The author may be reached at shubhra.gupta@gmail.com