Movie Murmur

In the first screening schedule of my Tulu language digital feature film SUDDHA (The Cleansing Rites) that was held in the villages of Coastal Karnataka a few months back, I had traveled to various schools and colleges. But for the second and the third schedules, I decided to target the general public. This automatically meant that the screenings had to be held only in the evenings. Yet, I managed to have two screenings a day, for during the day time I continued showing the film to interested college students. After having written to almost all the Gram Panchayats (Village Governing Bodies) in the Tulu speaking areas of the State of Karnataka and after having hobnobbed with various governmental and non governmental cultural organizations requesting them to take the initiative in hosting or arranging the screenings of SUDDHA in the villages of coastal Karnataka; and having failed to evoke any response, I decided to individually contact grassroots level groups that have engaged thems...

The magnificent Ararat peak greeted me when I first landed in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia - a country that was once a part of the erstwhile Soviet Union Bloc. The snow peaked mountain was just majestic. I just could not take my eyes off it. I was there in Yerevan along with my feature film SUDDHA (The Cleansing Rites) to attend the Golden Apricot International Film Festival that was held from 9-14 July 2007. With me in the vehicle was Ms An Cheong-sook, a film critic from South Korea . Her gaze too, was on the Ararat. Mount Ararat is one of the tallest of the peaks in the area. Armenians often boast that that it can be seen from anywhere in their country. It is presently located just beyond its borders, in the Turkish territory. It is said that during the Biblical times, the Noah’s Ark had landed in Mount Ararat . Some archaeologists quote satellite images and swear that the remains of the Arc are still buried somewhere in the snow peaked mountain. Some others say that...

A few months back I had approached Mr. T.A. Srinivas of Chitrabharathi, to distribute my Tulu digital film SUDDHA (The Cleansing Rites) in Mangalore. Tulu films have a history of just over thirty five years. On an average, one Tulu film is being made every year. In the two districts in which Tulu language is spoken, Mangalore is the biggest center for such films – followed by Udupi and Putthur. A four weeks run in each of these center is enough for a Tulu film to be considered as successful. If the production costs of the movie is kept to the minimum and if it is intelligently publicized, Tulu films do recover their money. Some producers even swear that profits can be made. Srinivas is from Mangalore. He has made a career out of distributing the Kannada films of Dr. Rajkumar in Coastal Karnataka. His love for his native Tulu language and his fascination for the film production bug, has seen him venture into the making of a couple of Tulu movies which, by his own confessions, were ju...

There is always is a strong stinking sense of incompleteness if the film that you have made does not get the opportunity to be viewed widely. The mainstream cinema is lucky to be having a business model in its production-distribution-exhibition chain that facilitates this process of dissemination. But it has its own set of unwritten rules that defines the likes and dislikes of its audience. Unfortunately, in the little interaction that I have had with the harbingers of mainstream cinema, my Tulu language digital feature film SUDDHA has been branded as a film that will not be accepted by a ‘wider audience’. It has been portrayed as THE ‘eternal truth’. While I do accept that it is becoming increasingly difficult for my film to find a wider audience within the well entrenched production - distribution - exhibition system that the mainstream cinema can boast off, it is a total myth that films like SUDDHA cannot lend itself to a wider audience. There are quite a number of people who wo...