Around The World, At Home

The success of Viacom’s Colors proves a point: the alternative soon becomes the mainstream, points out T Gangadhar, senior vice president, SET Max. The unusual soaps seem to have breathed their last, and reality shows have emerged as the new attraction. Entertainment at home seems to be in the state of an overhaul.

But while reality shows like Big Boss and Indian Idol have hit the headlines, the entry of world cinema into Indian television has almost gone unnoticed. For the likes of Gangadhar, the move to movies from around the world is logical. “There are only a finite number of movies to be drawn from Hollywood and Bollywood shelves; the only way out to fresh content is through the language barrier,” he explains.

It’s true that directors of the calibre of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Guru Dutt, all internationally-acclaimed, broke through the language barrier in the cinema world, becoming universally appreciated for their films. These greats also sowed the seeds for the 'New Indian Cinema' movement that started in the ‘70s to fill in the aesthetic vacuum.

Is this the dawn of a similar movement now hitting our television sets?

Gangadhar sees the emergence of a new order, where even compelling content is taken off air after it has outlived its utility. Gautam Shiknis, founder and managing director of Palador Pictures, on the other hand, says the intelligent viewer was bound to look for something different, faced with the monotony of the soaps for the better part of the last decade.

Palador boasts a collection of 1100 of the best titles from all over the world: movies that range from almost a century-old DW Griffith's 1915 silent movie The Birth of a Palador's Gautam Shiknis Nation to Kar Wai Wong's My Blueberry Nights, just released last year. The collection includes Charlie Chaplin movies, films by Buster Keaton, Akiro Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski from the intervening period, befitting Shiknis' definition of world cinema as ' movies, free from the bounds of space and time'.

While Palador promoted foreign language film DVDs in the country in 2005, the first to do so, it has now announced its intention to grace the television sets in early 2009.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, UTV launched its World Movies channel, with NDTV following suit with its Lumiere just about a month ago. Palador has already made a name in homes outside the big metros, as Shiknis claims, in far-flung Jammu, Jharkhand and even the Andamans. Some 30 percent of its customers live outside the big cities, almost trashing the notion that these movies with English subtitles cater to a niche audience— the urban, English-speaking, well-travelled elite. The internet seems to have done its bit, exposing these people to the cultures and films from the distant world and bringing them into the loop.

In fact, Palador, Lumiere and the like have sought a multimedia platform to expand the reach of their movies. Just last year, Palador and UTV were to collaborate to screen the former's films from its Olive Collection in theatres but unfortunately, the idea did not take off. Though Palador has no plans for theatrical releases of its films and is focusing solely on television for now, Lumiere's 400-odd films are being released in select theatres in the bigger metros, one every two weeks.

Further, Lumiere, in a joint venture with Excel Home Videos, is hoping to make around 80 new films available on DVDs every year. Dhruvank Vaidya, senior vice president of NDTV Imagine Private Limited, which owns the Lumiere brand, termed it a soft launch—giving advertisers the time to make up their minds on whether this is one of the answers to the recession that has plagued the television entertainment industry.

In the past, subtitling woes have afflicted DVDs made in India. Aware of this particular problem, both Palador and Lumiere have translators assessing the subtitles obtained from the world sales agents, sifting through the appropriateness of the words used, checking for grammatical errors, thus bringing in much needed rigour to the process. With the discerning viewer they mostly cater to — enjoying the quality on offer internationally from the likes of the more experienced Criterion—they know they can afford no slip-ups.

Where Palador and Lumiere differ is in their approach to content. Palador is already offering shorter, rarer, films of Indian directors like Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Kundan Shah, Girish Kasravalli and Sriram Raghavan along with its titles on DVDs. It has its eye on non-commercial regional films too. Vaidya, on the other hand, believes Lumiere's role is to provide the Indian viewers access to international films.

Rights to films are bought and deals are struck at festivals around the world. Those in Lumiere's collection fall in the Rupees 25 lakh-2 crore range. Film festivals in India have not yet become the meeting point of rights sales agents and broadcasters. But Aruna Vasudev, director, Osian's Cinefan festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, held in Delhi every year, cannot hold back her excitement at the thought of world cinema hitting our television sets. “The television is a good way to be introduced to a good director, a good movie. It's responsible for the large turnouts in festivals across India. The viewers who have caught a glimpse of a director's work on the small screen cannot wait to indulge in more of his/her films on big screen. Even watching the same film on big screen is worth making the trip to a festival for,” she says.

Three channels dedicated to world cinema in the space of a year; isn't this a little too many for a relatively small audience? Vaidya explains: “There are some 40 news channels in the country, and a host of the regular entertainment channels. Three can't be too many. Besides, there are always going to be people watching good cinema.”