Alternative cinema finds takers in Ahmedabad

Sunset Boulevard is one club that almost exclusively screens one film of the “World Cinema” genre each week. Its founder Shiladitya Bora said,“The most important thing is that we have been able to retain our membership.”

Bora,also the founder of last year’s Ahmedabad International Film Festival,set up the club partly because the festival evoked good response. Even the club membership has swelled to 109 from the initial 37 when it started in April. More than half of the memberships are now Platinum (one year) memberships.

Besides,as many as 19 people,who previously declined membership,but attended screenings on preview passes,have now become members.

The success has been followed by the club’s expansion into Hyderabad as well as tie-ups with a number of institutes from where it can source films.

Another genre that has been in demand is documentaries. There are now 26 clubs in the city catering to this category since 2006.

Nazariya,a documentary club,has even set up college film clubs through MoUs. It doesn’t charge any fees from the colleges,but the MoUs stipulate that there is a space and equipment for screenings,and that films and cinema become a co-curricular course in the college curriculum.

Gaurang Raval,program manager at Nazariya said there is a 60:40 ratio between documentary/non-fiction and mainstream feature films being screened in these college film clubs.

“At first,we usually show mainstream films,but after a while,we learned that students are more interested in non-fiction and documentaries because they talk about their lives,about things that actually affect them. So the shift to those genres have been quite natural,” he said.

Nazariya has also annually organised four Peace Festivals and four Women’s Film Festivals in the city,besides running a film club for the youth in Gomtipur who have dropped out of school and are working,and another club that screens at least one film per month at the Natarani amphitheatre.

There is the short film segment too,which has been promoted by Shamiana for the last 11 months in the city. Shamiana runs on sponsorships but levies a charge of Rs 30 per seat for its open-for-all-screenings,which is passed to the theatres.

Cyrus Dastur of Shamiana said their success has been in part due to the absence of any other entity that collects and screens short films,as well also the fact that more people aspire to make short films over feature films,which need time and money.

He said he tried to create a platform for the makers of short films; a collection of Indian short films was packed into a DVD called Shamiana Shorts and recently released.