While we weren't looking, a parallel film movement has been brewing. And it's coming soon to a screen near you. We're not just talking multiplexes, but also your laptop and mobile device. Signs of the revolution are already here - whether it's catching the ups and downs of yuppie couple Ram and Ria online, a poignant short film of a little Iraqi girl who waits for her soldier dad to return on YouTube, or the quickie adventures of a lovable animated felon at a multiplex.
Imagine this... you're waiting for a doctor's appointment and decide to flip out your phone and download a mobisode - a short comedy, slice-of-life story or an animation. These short, under 20-minute films, shot sometimes with a digicam or using a cellphone, are already here. While the most well-known example of the episodic format is Sanjay Gupta's Das Kahaniyaan, there are several experienced as well as novice filmmakers experimenting with it.
Take Shyamal Karmakar, an experienced Kolkata-based filmmaker and editor, who keeps returning to the medium for the love of it. "Cinema is a language. I make short films the way a novelist writes a short story," he says. His nine-minute film Setu, about a little girl who is happily oblivious to her space being overtaken by the cacophony of sounds around her, finds an empty bridge where she decides to take out her toys and play, took an award at the Oberhausen Festival in Germany.
The medium is also a starting point for feature filmmakers, like Manisha Baldawa, a graduate of Pune's Film and Television Institute of India, whose Lemon Yellow Afternoons, a 12-minute film about the relationship between a little girl and a Tamilian grandmother, was made under a budget of less than Rs 5,000.
Indian American filmmaker Parthiban Shanmugam's A Pizza Story on the life of a war-torn Iraqi soldier's daughter, adjudged for the jury award at the three-day International Festival of Short Films on Culture in Jaipur, has inspired him to turn it into a full-length feature film to be filmed in Rajasthan. He says, "Short films are a big trailer for feature films. However, in the West, there are several short film TV channels which need content."
While the festival circuits in India and abroad are a good venue for spotting talent, some are exploring innovative spaces. Like Kunal Vohra, who tied up with companies hosting LCD screens across cities to show his film Snow Globe, on global warming, on railway platforms and retail spaces. The 40-second film, which cost him about Rs 6 lakh and was funded by the CII, featured Gul Panag and was also telecast on some television channels.
While Vohra managed to recover costs, funding from corporate sponsors remains an uphill task. Getting funding and avenues of distribution are tough, says Delhi-based filmmaker Gargi Sen, whose Magic Lantern Foundation makes independent short films and holds screenings "at colleges, schools and cultural centres".
But the scene is opening up. For instance, Buzz 18's Short Cut Festival got the winner a one-film contract with Pritish Nandy Communications. The winners of Campus 18's 'Digistars: War of the Videos' get a chance to be part of an online serial. The DocEdge workshop at Kolkata's Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute invites short filmmakers to pitch for funding.
Multiplexes too are slowly opening up to the phenomena, beyond being a venue for short film festivals. Karmakar is awaiting a multiplex release of three of his short films. Adlabs has already shown a few episodes of animated shorts Crime Time, the felonious adventures of Shifty, which range from the silly to the sublime, which had an Internet premiere too. Future Thought Productions has followed it up with animated segment That Darn Jesus, a humorous look into the possible teenage years of Jesus Christ, which was part of Hollywood film Universal Remote and also featured at the Short Film Corner at Cannes.
Says Sandeep Marwah, director, Asian Academy of Film and Television, "Give it six months and short films will be big". And, why not? We live in exciting times. "You never know when today's curiosity becomes mainstream," says Siddharth Kumar, Creative Director, PixelKraft, whose experimental venture Ram and Ria has finished a season's run of 30 episodes, of three minutes each, online. Kumar promoted the show through iShare and blogs.
The mobile revolution too is not far away. Films shot on the mobile phone and edited on the table are going to catch on sooner than we think, says Marwah. While Marwah's Festival of Cellphone Cinema which targeted aspiring filmmakers attracted about 90 entries, Culture Unplugged is also launching its mobile fest.
Emerging mobile technology will also make broadcast easier. Says Hemant Jain, Senior VP-Domestic Business of Hungama Mobile, "Currently, we have 2-2.5G mobile networks which don't support large file formats. But with 3G networks, things will change." The way forward is to have movies embedded on mobile handsets. Wait and watch!
Imagine this... you're waiting for a doctor's appointment and decide to flip out your phone and download a mobisode - a short comedy, slice-of-life story or an animation. These short, under 20-minute films, shot sometimes with a digicam or using a cellphone, are already here. While the most well-known example of the episodic format is Sanjay Gupta's Das Kahaniyaan, there are several experienced as well as novice filmmakers experimenting with it.
Take Shyamal Karmakar, an experienced Kolkata-based filmmaker and editor, who keeps returning to the medium for the love of it. "Cinema is a language. I make short films the way a novelist writes a short story," he says. His nine-minute film Setu, about a little girl who is happily oblivious to her space being overtaken by the cacophony of sounds around her, finds an empty bridge where she decides to take out her toys and play, took an award at the Oberhausen Festival in Germany.
The medium is also a starting point for feature filmmakers, like Manisha Baldawa, a graduate of Pune's Film and Television Institute of India, whose Lemon Yellow Afternoons, a 12-minute film about the relationship between a little girl and a Tamilian grandmother, was made under a budget of less than Rs 5,000.
Indian American filmmaker Parthiban Shanmugam's A Pizza Story on the life of a war-torn Iraqi soldier's daughter, adjudged for the jury award at the three-day International Festival of Short Films on Culture in Jaipur, has inspired him to turn it into a full-length feature film to be filmed in Rajasthan. He says, "Short films are a big trailer for feature films. However, in the West, there are several short film TV channels which need content."
While the festival circuits in India and abroad are a good venue for spotting talent, some are exploring innovative spaces. Like Kunal Vohra, who tied up with companies hosting LCD screens across cities to show his film Snow Globe, on global warming, on railway platforms and retail spaces. The 40-second film, which cost him about Rs 6 lakh and was funded by the CII, featured Gul Panag and was also telecast on some television channels.
While Vohra managed to recover costs, funding from corporate sponsors remains an uphill task. Getting funding and avenues of distribution are tough, says Delhi-based filmmaker Gargi Sen, whose Magic Lantern Foundation makes independent short films and holds screenings "at colleges, schools and cultural centres".
But the scene is opening up. For instance, Buzz 18's Short Cut Festival got the winner a one-film contract with Pritish Nandy Communications. The winners of Campus 18's 'Digistars: War of the Videos' get a chance to be part of an online serial. The DocEdge workshop at Kolkata's Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute invites short filmmakers to pitch for funding.
Multiplexes too are slowly opening up to the phenomena, beyond being a venue for short film festivals. Karmakar is awaiting a multiplex release of three of his short films. Adlabs has already shown a few episodes of animated shorts Crime Time, the felonious adventures of Shifty, which range from the silly to the sublime, which had an Internet premiere too. Future Thought Productions has followed it up with animated segment That Darn Jesus, a humorous look into the possible teenage years of Jesus Christ, which was part of Hollywood film Universal Remote and also featured at the Short Film Corner at Cannes.
Says Sandeep Marwah, director, Asian Academy of Film and Television, "Give it six months and short films will be big". And, why not? We live in exciting times. "You never know when today's curiosity becomes mainstream," says Siddharth Kumar, Creative Director, PixelKraft, whose experimental venture Ram and Ria has finished a season's run of 30 episodes, of three minutes each, online. Kumar promoted the show through iShare and blogs.
The mobile revolution too is not far away. Films shot on the mobile phone and edited on the table are going to catch on sooner than we think, says Marwah. While Marwah's Festival of Cellphone Cinema which targeted aspiring filmmakers attracted about 90 entries, Culture Unplugged is also launching its mobile fest.
Emerging mobile technology will also make broadcast easier. Says Hemant Jain, Senior VP-Domestic Business of Hungama Mobile, "Currently, we have 2-2.5G mobile networks which don't support large file formats. But with 3G networks, things will change." The way forward is to have movies embedded on mobile handsets. Wait and watch!
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