Its time for Asian Oscars

Shekhar Kapoor on his new media platform along with friend AR Rahman,and what could be done to push Indian cinema out of inertia

Listen to this article

00:00

1x 1.5x 1.8x

Shekhar Kapoor on his new media platform along with friend AR Rahman,and what could be done to push Indian cinema out of inertia

If there is one thing filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor is into these days,it is the thrill and excitement of social networking. Twitter,Facebook and the Internet all these are weapons of mass communication,of awareness,of cutting across borders and asserting the freedom of expression, said the filmmaker,who was in the Capital for the 12th Osians-Cinefan Film Festival. The reason for his new-found connection with social media could be traced to Qyuki,the new digital company that he has founded along with music maestro AR Rahman. As Kapoor puts is,the digital media venture is still in the alpha phase and will be operational from October,but people can connect only by invitation.

There is,in the meantime,an active Facebook page for Qyuki. Rahman and I go way back,and are good friends,and we both agree that there is a large chunk of our population trapped and locked at the bottom of the pyramid,and there lies immense talent,innovation,entrepreneurship and imagination untapped and wasted. We got together and started Qyuki a year ago,to bring these people up, explained Kapoor.

He claimed that Qyuki will provide creative content creators with an online platform where they can showcase their work,collaborate with others and discover new opportunities to share their work with the world. If you have a song,someone will help score music and another one will help in finding a market for the same. Same goes for other art forms. No,it is not Facebook or YouTube,Kapoor added. It is a collaborative platform for music and films,to begin with.

Casting his net wide,Kapoor strongly believes that the internet can achieve another feat: to motivate and mobilise Indias youth to take responsibility for saving the most important natural resource water. I have been working on it for long now researching,writing and understanding the controversies it will create. The first question is who does this water belong to? Privatisation and urbanisation have reduced this country to a land-grabbing nation, he rued.

Out of the Hollywood and Oscar phase,Kapoor added that if he made a film now,it has to carry weight and value,and go beyond being just a good film.

His contention is that Indian cinema has become inert. Cinema has the inherent quality of rebellion,to absorb and adapt,we have stopped taking financial and creative risks, he said.

Story continues below this ad

And as he put it,theres a need for having Asian Oscars,for diverse marketing strategies,to revise ticket prices and entertainment tax,to tell bigger and relevant stories,to promote regional cinema and its rawness,to open minds and to relax censors. Chinas is now the biggest film industry in the world because it adds a new theatre every day; it is improving its infrastructure and conquering the world culturally too, added Kapoor.

But he is hopeful that the new wave will bring change. New directors are restless and their creative urge is becoming greater, concluded Kapoor.