Now,Presenting…

Dekh India Circus eventually featured actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Jethu,and has since travelled to and won accolades at several international film festivals. The film awaits an India release due to the lack of a distributor. When Ali came to know about it,he decided to come on board as a ‘presenter’. “It is a wonderful film but needs to reach out to the audience,which is not happening. If attaching my name can help the situation,I will be more than happy to do so,” says Ali.

The new breed of filmmakers are not afraid to experiment or work with their contemporaries. Not only do they function as colleagues,appreciating and critiquing one another’s work,but also give other newcomers a chance to tell their own stories. In situations where they believe in a film but cannot come on board as a producer,they have devised a way to support it by “presenting” it.

Much like Ali,Kiran Rao has taken it upon herself to ensure that Anand Gandhi’s award-winning bilingual Ship of Theseus gets a theatrical release. “When I saw the film at a festival in the city,I felt it is one of the most significant works to have come out of India in recent times. Since the film was already made,I could not have produced it. But I was keen to be attached to the project,” says Rao. Anurag Kashyap has gone a step ahead to present not a fiction feature film but Abhay Kumar’s experimental documentary,Placebo.

The presenter’s role chiefly revolves around lending a film credibility and promoting it to a mass audience,though the extent of involvement is a personal choice. “Imtiaz came on board also as an advisor. He suggests marketing strategies and helps us meet with prospective distributors apart from travelling with the film to festivals whenever his schedule permits,” says Hadawale.

Rao’s involvement is also creative in terms of promotion. She and members of the Aamir Khan Productions team have been working on alternative options for the film’s posters,planning extensive online marketing strategies and researching the market to find out the cities in which the film will be best received. Kashyap,who has come on board even as Placebo is being made,has lent his technical expertise to the film. “Having his name attached to the project also helped us get crowd-funding for Placebo. Besides,he knows the festival circuit well and we can expect his guidance and recommendation,once the film is ready,” says Kumar.

To have such credible names attached makes a film sound promising at the outset. But does it have an impact? Gandhi is lucky that Rao’s involvement has got Ship of Theseus a distributor in UTV. The production house came on board as much to be attached to an illustrious project as for their long-time association with Khan. “At least we are providing viewers an option to watch different kind of cinema,” says Gandhi. The makers of Dekh India Circus,however,have shown the film to several industry biggies but still struggle to find a keen distributor “although Imtiaz’s efforts to find one are on”. Eventually,how will the journey of each of these films pan out,remains to be seen.