There
is something in the air in Bombay, everyone’s talking about it.
Sometimes it feels very real, and at other times it feels more like
Yeti- the mystical creature somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas,
many of have seen his footprints in the snow, no one seems to have met
the guy or lived to tell the tale. It was pre-maturely named the Hindi
new wave by festival directors in the West. It was expected to arrive
sometime in 2009, just after
Slumdog Millionaire, the Slumdog
effect, but it did not quite materialize then. The following years, 2010
and 2011 were good years for Indian Indies with some travelling to
major film festivals and even pulling in good numbers in the local box
office. Yes, something’s definitely in the air, the water has pulled
back and exposed all the artifacts on the sea floor- shells, fish
carcasses, water bottles, rocks, even Ganesh idols that refused to melt,
etc., people have walked in and are eyeing all these things with
curiosity and this big Hindi New Wave is expected to come and sweep them
off of their feet anytime now. But guess what; it’s not coming anytime
soon, because unlike tsunamis, film movements take time to mature and
bear fruit, a set of visionaries and the convergence of fortuitous
events turn it into an industry, an ecosystem that can only develop
organically.
It brought a smile to my lips recently when I saw a screenwriting
class advertised, to be held in New York City, ‘the craft with an eye to
the Indian Independent Film World’, it’s like selling Yeti t-shirts in
all sizes, including triple XL – Yeti’s own size! But it’s a good
thing; it means that the Yeti that is the Indian Independent Film has
left his footprints in the snow again recently. People will come out and
sell Yeti mugs, t-shirts, mouse pads shaped like footprints in the
snow. But more importantly, the explorers, the visionaries may just find
Yeti now, now that they have one more clue. When that happens, the real
Indian Independent Film Movement will become an Industry.
The conflict of the modern and the traditional that defines our lives
more and more everyday and the angst that comes from it will spur
stories and storytellers. There will be the quintessential Indian
Independent Films one day; they will be a true reflection of the idea of
India and the Indian life at this moment in time, and there will be
people lining up to watch them as well, either in dedicated indie film
venues or on their i-pads. But it’s not going to be easy to get there,
not as easy as selling Yeti Foot Print Shaped Mouse Pads.
To build and sustain a viable Independent Film Industry in India we
need an ecosystem. This ecosystem of studios/financers, production
houses, filmmakers with truly independent voices, talent development
programs, festivals with real curatorial authority, dedicated venues for
indie film/exhibitors, independent film press to solely review indie
films and only report on specialty film box office, and most importantly
– organizations and institutions dedicated to audience building – The
audience that will buy the tickets/ DVDs/ downloads/ merchandise/ what
have you, and pump the monies into this ecosystem.
…this big Hindi New Wave is expected to
come and sweep them off of their feet anytime now. But guess what; it’s
not coming anytime soon, because unlike tsunamis, film movements take
time to mature and bear fruit, a set of visionaries and the convergence
of fortuitous events turn it into an industry, an ecosystem that can
only develop organically.
But before we come to that, what exactly is an Indie film?
Indie in the West is a non-studio funded film, or a film with bold
themes or one that goes into unchartered territory, is truly
experimental, etc. There will be 3 or 4 definitions of an ‘Indie Film’
in the West. In India, it is more complex. “How complex is your
complexity?” put that on a t-shirt. “India – our complexity will boggle
your complexity’s mind” put that on the back. In India, there are as
many definitions of Indie film as our Gods have hands and our demons
have heads. The definition of ‘Indie Film’ depends on the person you ask
– some will say it is a film without songs, other like to say an Indie
film is an ‘issue based film’ which could mean anything from ‘it is a
bad script where all the subtext – the aforementioned issue, is
summarized in scrolling text or voiceover at the end’ to ‘a film without
songs’, other definitions doing the rounds are an Indie Film is a
festival film/at times black and white for good measure/ made by so and
so/ starring this, that or the other/etc. etc.. Among audiences an
unspoken consensus seems to have emerged – “an Indie film is a low
budget film with no stars that may or may not have songs peppered in its
narrative, it is likely that it will be slow-paced, it may deal with a
current affair, and it will surely have a beginning, middle and end. “
A highly scientific poll of my family, friends and neighbors
generated this last definition. I am skeptical about everything usually,
including and not limited to Elvis’s passing, but for the sake of
argument let’s assume that this definition is accurate. Why is this
dangerous to our very existence as filmmakers or players in the Indie
World? It is simple really; our audience has a very broad and loopy
definition of our product. By audience I don’t mean foreign film
festival audiences, I mean the local audience that is our Bimbo bread
and Amul butter. The audience that decides whether we get to buy real
diapers for our kids or just pretend to be eco-friendly and use hand
washed cloth diapers over and over.
This broad and loopy definition results in too many films being
clubbed into the ‘Indie film’ category. If the audience thinks every low
budget, non-song, slow paced, issue based feature is an ‘Indie film’;
we are developing our audiences with a good ‘Indie Film’ and killing it
with the 10 bad ones that will follow until the next good one comes
along. We will go 1 step ahead, 2 steps back, and no prizes for guessing
where we will end up. We will end up hand washing cloth diapers.
Why does the Indian audience have such a broad and loopy definition
of the Indian Indie film? Because there are not enough tastemakers,
curators, festivals with real curatorial authority, reviewers, gurus,
filmmakers, etc. telling the audience what an ‘Indie Film’ really is. It
may be low budget or medium budget, may or may not have stars, stripes
or songs in it. But it is essentially a good story well told, that asks
questions rather than gives answers, and for that reason it will live in
your conscience long after you have left the theater. Hence you must
purchase the ticket and provide us with our bimbo bread, amul butter and
real diapers. Indie in India has very little to do with its funding
model, it is content with an independent spirit. The difference between
the Bollywood film and the Indian Indie is just that – the
quintessential Bollywood musical gives the audience what they expect,
and the Indian Indie ideally gives them what they least expect but
hopefully want. The other difference is that the Bollywood apparatus
like a true industry is very good at defining its product, hence making
it ‘commercial’, and the Indian Indie World is not. If I don’t tell you
what it is that I am selling to you, why would you buy it from me?
Therefore, when you tell someone in Bombay that you are a filmmaker, the
first question they ask it – “Commercial or Indie?” The obvious
implications being that the Indian Indie film is not a commercial
enterprise, and yes you can marry my daughter but only over my grave.
So what does this indie ecosystem need to look like? No matter who we
are in this ecosystem – studios/financers, production houses,
filmmakers with truly independent voices, talent development programs,
festivals, venues for indie film, independent film press, organizations
and institutions dedicated to audience building…we have work to do.
Currently, our Indie ecosystem works much like our cities – Everyone
cleans and jazzes up their own home while ignoring the common spaces
that bind our lives together.
What we don’t have & need…
1. Festivals with real curatorial authority, or just festivals with distinct and unique personalities –
Film festivals that matter have a vision, and a visionary helmer, a
person who sets the tone, and makes sure that the bouquet of films that
the festival is going to offer up to the festival audience that year is
going to collectively say something about their World and reality at
that moment in time. Coherence. That is what draws audiences in and over
time makes the festival relevant to the local audience and a real
curatorial authority. The mark of quality or aura that these festivals
with real curatorial authority provide films and filmmakers, what if we
had a festival like that in India?
Indian filmmakers have a common gripe – a film that went to
Oberhausen, Tribeca, Rotterdam, Fribourg and other premier film
festivals, but they have no clue what would be a fitting festival for
the film in India. I know that the film is a strange and funny take on
life, so festivals like Rotterdam and Oberhausen that encourage unique
perspectives and weird views of the World we live in are good platforms
for it, but what are the unique personalities of our local film
festivals?
Many of our local festivals are trying to bring the hottest films on
the festival circuit to India, have great panels and master classes, and
a great international guest list. But few are trying to develop their
own unique personality and curatorial style, to make sure all these
films collectively say something to our local audience. Our homegrown
SXSW/ Sundance/ Tribeca with an independent spirit and a platform that
would help Indian Indie filmmakers unlock and access our own local
audiences.
2. Savvy indie film marketers –
I saw a film on a flight a few months ago called “Rocket Singh –
Salesman of the Year”. It was deftly written, well directed, the
performances were great, and overall in my humble opinion no less than
‘Little Miss Sunshine’ – another slice of life film that took the
American Indie World by storm a few years ago. It is a big Indian studio
film with a big star, but it had a true independent spirit in that it
was a reflection of our times and moral conflicts, a good story well
told where there were no stock characters, no villains but real people
with real conflicts. If that film had fared well at the Indian box
office, it would have done more for Indian Indie film than many ‘Indie
Films’. Perhaps it should have been positioned as an Indian Indie that
can cross over. Had it crossed over to western audiences and then come
back to India with accolades, it would have done better business? I
don’t know, but it’s worth speculating. The example I am using is
subjective of course, I like this film, others may not, but surely we
all agree we need good marketers who can take a good story well told and
sell it to a relevant subset of our own audience.
3. Dedicated venues – It is
very heartening to see many screening series and organizations trying to
build up our film culture. Sundance’s Film Forward program recently
came to India, and PVR theater chain’s Rare initiative gets talked about
as well. But the key missing piece in this whole ecosystem is the
dedicated venues for Indie Film. Where do I go to buy my ‘Khosla Ka
Ghosla’ mug, my DEV D hip flask, and DVD set of the Apu Trilogy that is
on sale during the Ray retrospective? In a city like Bombay with real
estate going through the roof, a dedicated venue may not be viable, but
in smaller towns? In Indore, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, others? The IFC
Center in New York is perhaps not raking in the moolah for IFC but it
provides their films with a much-valued theatrical release, and it’s a
space through which they nurture their audience. It’s not possible to
monetize a community of film lovers without giving them their go to
places to commune – become a community and grow.
4. Development – As a writer
your only currency is time, you have nothing else really. You have clear
choices to make: should you work on that unauthorized or authorized
remake some has offered you, should you write dialogues for someone
else’s picture (
in India the dialogue writer is often different from
the screenwriter, because screenplays are written in English, dialogues
in Hindi/other local language), or should you toil away at a story
that has been nagging at you to come on the page? Should
you distill this story through your life experiences and risk the effort
to come up with a good story well told? But wait a minute, you have
bills to pay, bread to buy, maybe even butter. Stories are like buses.
When the story bus hits you, you have to put it down on paper and give
it the love, the attention, the toil, and the compulsion it deserves. If
you don’t, the bus takes off, looking for another storyteller. Do this
enough times, and this is every Bombay writer’s biggest fear – the God
given receptors you have to observe the human behavior around you and
bring it to your stories will dim, that story bus will stop coming if
you let it go enough times. Talent is not democratic. Very few have it.
So why don’t we have mechanisms in place to protect those who do?
The concept of ‘development’ does not exist in the jargon of most producers and studios in India. But what if it did?
Who we don’t have enough of…
1. Uncompromising storytellers, uncompromising reviewers, and an uncompromising audience –
How many times have we heard or read this – “that was good for an
Indian film” or “I went with low expectations so I liked it” or someone
gave me this gem recently “even though it was clearly a rip off it had a
very Indian spin to it”. If we don’t hold each-other accountable for
lazy writing and unbridled stealing then we deserve the subpar content
that is served up to us.
Slowly, a set of mainstream reviewers, portals and independent blogs are gaining traction:
dearcinema.com,
longlivecinema.com
are among the sites that are dedicated to the Indian Indie and not only
provide a place to commune but also try to keep everyone honest.
2. A personal connection to our stories –
Enough said. This was a big year for India at Cannes, we had 4 Indian
Films in various sections and festival side-bars. The World wants more,
and we should want more from ourselves.
3. Producers who can navigate international markets and the festival landscape –
Why is this important to create our own local ecosystem of Indie film?
If our stories travel to international markets, and our films travel to
international film festivals and have major sales agents on board that
can sell them in international territories. That flushes dollars back
into our indie ecosystem, the monies that will sustain this ecosystem.
It also helps to set up co-productions wherein foreign producers who
have produced content for the World markets come on board as creative
stakeholders. It helps to raise the bar on content, and enhance the
universal core of our stories. How many people can this story talk to? 1
billion? 6 billion? In the future, the future Mr. Gittes, the film will
have a longer long tail, it will be consumed on multiple platforms long
after what we now know as windows (Theatrical, Satellite, TV, Hotels
& Planes, DVD, everything broadband) are exhausted. Films that will
make full use of this longer long tail will be stories with a strong
universal core, stories that can speak to 6 billion because the creative
team – writer, director, producers, and actors were able to go deep and
find something that everyone can hang their hat on.
4. Talent Development Programs – While this is the
most obvious need in any industry, it is the hardest one to nail. We
need more Talent Development Programs for writers and directors devoid
of the usual suspects. We need many more safe places for writers to
develop their craft. A talent development program for nurturing savvy
producers in navigating co-productions and alternative funding and
distribution models is perhaps an even more critical need of the hour.
The arrival of Sundance in India via Mahindra is great step ahead to
shine the light on and to nurture writers. The National Film Development
Corporation (NFDC) has been visionary with the NFDC- Binger
Screenwriters lab, now in its fifth year and the Film Bazaar. Both the
lab and the Film Bazaar have become launch pads into the international
markets for projects with a universal take on the Indian experience. The
Film Bazaar attracts programmers from the major film festivals and all
the major sales agents and showcases Indian Indie projects like they
have not been showcased yet.
5. Visionaries & disruptors – People in the
creative process and in every step of the journey of the film that
question why we do what we do in the way we do it.
What does an alternative distribution model look like in a country
with a billion people and the most rapidly growing middle class in the
World? And the fastest growing cell phone market in the World? Can a
piece of the specialty film business in India be a volumes business? And
more questions even more interesting than these. The thing about
visionaries and disruptors is that they don’t always know the answers
but they have the exposure and receptors to ask the right questions. You
cannot track Yeti down without asking questions.
6. Audience building initiatives –
In this entire ecosystem of the future Indian Indie film business, the
people/person/entity/organization that may own the biggest piece of pie,
is the one that invests in audience building today. The one that helps
to gather, collect, nurture the audience under a virtual or physical
roof will likely also be the one to monetize them effectively.
Where do we go now…
There are overlaps of course throughout this value chain that goes
from writers to exhibitors. For example, most Financers in India are
also Producers. And the curators and tastemakers are not just festivals
but also the press and Indie stalwarts who tweet, but no single part of
this ecosystem can exist for too long without the others being alive and
well. There is the potential for huge rewards throughout the Indian
Indie value chain but it is clear that all the links need to function if
we want to expand our local audiences and tell our stories to the
World.
India is in flux. And it’s not an organized and controlled flux akin
to China, it is leaps and hops, spurts and bursts, backwards and
forwards. It is a screenplay with the most erratic pacing, and us – the
characters that live the screenplay that is India, have seen the biggest
scams, the biggest income gaps, the biggest dreams and the biggest
nightmares come alive all at once. Attitudes and tastes are evolving
fast. What is a taboo today won’t be one 6 months or a year from now.
You can’t write this stuff and yet we must. The Indian Indie film World
has the unique privilege to document our society at a time like no
other, to not only commune with each other but also commune with our
audience. To tell them that we don’t know how to deal with this stuff
either, but here’s a story about it, we are all in this together.
The
narrative and the mood of the story and location determined the choice
of frames and shot taking. The simplicity of the storytelling had to be
replicated in the camera work to make it seamless with the narrative
flow. The intention was not to distract from the story but to complement
it.
