Interview on MiD-Day Bangalore

Thank you, Sunayana, for this half-page write-up... Awesome! Considering you had to jot it all down over phone... You're a rock star!!

For the record, a couple of small corrections/clarifications:

1. The article says 72 per cent of TFLW was shot in 3 weeks.
About 85 per cent of the film was actually shot in 12 days. The 72 per cent stat is about the occupancy during the 3 weeks we played at Sathyam Cinemas.

2. The problem in finding child actors who can speak English without any accent was to make sure that regional flavours don't restrict the market for a universal story. Generally, Bombay audiences have their strict bias against anything even remotely South Indian.

Coming Soon to Singapore!

I had got an email from Anant Shiva, a friend of Sagaro's, inviting me to send in That Four Letter Word for the Screenplayer Film Festival. Apparently, the festival is only for short films and they have made an exception to showcase TFLW because of its 'making' story, I hear.

All a filmmaker wants is for more people to see his film. (Sagaro: Don't take that to mean that you can put up a copy online if you have one). I'm glad that some of you in Singapore will be able to see the movie.

One of my school buddies and old dumb charades mate Amal Kiran is planning to organise a screening for his students. Amal knows the guys we've based the film on. So it would be interesting to see how he reacts to the film because he hasn't seen it himself yet.

TFLW goes to South Asian Film Festival, Bangladesh

I just got an email informing me that the film has been selected in the non-competitive section of the South Asian Film Festival, Bangladesh.

I had submitted my film after one of the festival programmers from India had asked me to send in the film.

The festival is between August 1 and 10 in Dhaka and Chittagong. The screening schedule should be put up on July 25 on the official site.

I'm yet to decide if I should go or not mainly because of the political turmoil in Dhaka. Besides, flying there is too expensive and the only other option is to fly to Kolkata and take a bus or train to Dhaka.

I'm tempted to go there because this is only the second International film festival that the film has been selected for after the Premiere in Chennai.

Now, I don't feel too bad spending money couriering films around the world. Each time I send through DHL, it costs me Rs.2400.

I remember filling up the entry form of the Milano Film Festival, Italy in the middle of the night and it took me nearly two hours because they had word limits for everything. Once I hit Submit, I got a message saying that the film DVD should reach them within the next 48 hours. It was 2 in the morning. I rushed out to take my bike and rode to the DHL centre near the airport after packing a DVD with the cleanest inlay cards that were available at home. I got there and found out it was going to cost me that much. I wasn't even carrying that kind of money and since I didn't have much of a bank balance either, I paid partly by cash and partly by card. They said it would take 3 days to reach Milan, Italy and that was a chance I was willing to take.

And then, I got home to do a little more reading on the festival and I found this link that took me to submission statistics. Some 2400 plus films had been submitted last year. This year, they have 2550 entries.

I read that they would select about 12 feature films in all.

I don't think I need to do the math to figure out that I just lost 2400 bucks in one night.

Post Script:
The results for the Milano Film Festival will be out on August 1. If you believe in miracles, please pray.

Thank you Bangalore!

I have not had a more critical audience.

But they were the sweetest too - they laughed at regular intervals during the film, argued with me quite a bit after the film and then sent me off with the routine applause. The reaction seemed mixed.

Since I didn't know what they really thought, especially after that heavyduty discussion, I asked Hrish to find out after I had left. I wanted to be know if it all there was any point in releasing the film there.

I was totally thrilled when Hrish messaged to tell me they rated the film 6 on 10 at the Roof Top Film Festival, Bangalore.

That's much more than my own rating of 5 on 10. Thank you guys!

Here are some more individual reports - Posts made on the festival by Hrish, Lavanya, Sathish, Thejesh and Vatsap.

Filmmaker/Actor Pawan came up with this wonderful suggestion that could sustain indie filmmakers on the wiki. He said that considering that all of us spend at least two hundred bucks everytime we go out to watch a movie, he said that once in a month we can give that 200 bucks money to pre-order a DVD made by an indie filmmaker. Bangalore has a base of 100 movie buffs interested in supporting indie cinema. Even if each of these 100 get 10 of their friends to do the same, an indie filmmaker would get 2 lakh rupees, which he rightly said, is enough to cover production, post and DVD authoring costs. Let's directly take the film to the audience. Let's just fire the producer, he said.

If Bangalore manages to pull this off and produce Pawan's new film, it will be a triumph for indie filmmaking.

Chennai too needs to do something to set up a network for indie filmmakers. Hopefully, we will have some news by early next month.

I spy a movement. :D

Coming soon to Bangalore!

Just mailed a DVD of the film to Hrish Thota, co-ordinator of Roof Top Film Festival, Bangalore to be held this weekend (July 7, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., July 8).

Since I have my weekly office meeting on Saturday afternoon, the only way I'm gonna be able to make it to Bangalore is by road.

I bought my cruiser for days like these. Finally, a road-trip on my bike. 700 kilometres (to Bangalore and back) in 24 hours.

Just one minor problem though: the maximum I've ever done at one stretch is 120 kilometres in six hours.

But like I said, I've already mailed the DVD, so irrespective of me making it or not, my film will surely reach there.