Kurosawa in Kolhapur

When Kurosawa goes to Kolhapur,it’s a sign that a genuine interest is taking root in India. After the striking success of the fest in Kolhapur,the Federation of Film Societies of India has announced festivals in Solapur and Nagpur,to be held in August and September respectively. World cinema,you could say,has trickled down—from arty audiences in Delhi and Mumbai to the small towns of India. It has become a term of common currency,entering the vocabulary of a large number of film-goers.

Ask Moinuddin,who owns a shop at Parsons Complex,a tiny basement market near the arterial Gemini flyover in Chennai. As you enter through a dark alleyway,you bizarrely find custom-notified shops selling,for the scandalously low price of Rs 50,what is politely called ‘original copy DVDs’. The glass-lined shops together probably contain a cinematic treasure that could take years to exhaust. Here,along with fashionable arthouse names like Godard and Bertolucci,it would be no surprise to find a copy of Wim Wenders’s Notebooks on Cities and Clothes or The Internationale,a documentary on the history of the mythical working-class song.

In 2002,when people started asking for Iranian films such as Children of Heaven,Moinuddin began to acquaint himself with world cinema jargon. “We used to have just around 10-12 titles then,” he says. “Over the last five years,the demand has zoomed,transforming our business.” He has made several trips to southeast Asia in the last few years to acquire more DVDs. The demands of his business mean that it is possible to have intelligent conversation with him about the merits of Majid Majidi’s films or Sica. His favourite films are Rashomon and The Bicycle Thief. “I enjoy watching these films,” he says. “I also keep track of film festivals.”

Growing up in the early ’90s,blogger Jai Arjun Singh recounts the difficulty in accessing non-mainstream cinema. “I got interested in 1930s American films,and later,foreign language cinema. But it was extremely hard to find and watch such films. My only hope,at that time,lay in embassy screenings and film festivals.”

Television channels such as UTV World Movies and NDTV Lumiere are the final piece of the jigsaw that have clicked into place. “Film festivals were happening,but there was no structure through which one could see world cinema on a regular basis,” says Dhruvank Vaidya,business head,NDTV Lumiere. Apart from channels competing for the world cinema audience,over the last year,DVDs of foreign films have also made an appearance in music stores such as Planet M. NDTV Lumiere has brought out 42 DVDs,ranging from Fatih Akin’s Solino to Bille August’s Goodbye Bafana. “Previously,the section for world cinema did not exist in stores. But things have changed fast,” says Vaidya.

Palador Pictures is another major player in the DVD market,having bought the rights to about 1,000 films. Its impressive roster includes films by Kurosawa,Kieslowski,Bergman,Godard and Wong kar-Wai. The Enlightened Film Group,which also runs the world cinema portal DearCinema.Com,claims to have sold 4,000 DVDs of The Bicycle Thief in the last six months alone. Other titles in the offing include Battleship Potemkin and Birth of a Nation. “It is incredible. Today,you can walk into your local Planet M and pick up Ingmar Bergman’s Persona,” says Singh.

It is still not smooth viewing for everyone. Censorship rears its head from time to time. Channels have to cut through scenes and films on the whole that have an overt sexual and violent content. Aruni Mahapatra,a student at Delhi University,found that major portions had been cut from the two films he bought — Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Francois Ozon’s Swimming Pool. “In the case of some films,substantial scenes fundamental to the film’s narrative have been cut,” he says. “I don’t think it is a problem,” says Vaidya. “We have to operate within the laws of the land. We,therefore,select films where there won’t be many cuts.”

It is precisely here that they cannot compete with the shops selling pirated DVDs,whose collection includes thousands of films from all over the world,popular as well as obscure. Over the last few years,several such shops have come up in every major Indian city. Attaining folklore status among dedicated cineastes,these ‘illegal’ shops have fostered and encouraged a diverse cinematic culture. When this vibrant and dynamic period in film viewership is recalled,one hopes they will get more than just a passing footnote.

Elsewhere,Kolhapur’s cinematic landscape is being quickly reconfigured after the festival. Membership of The Baburao Painter Film Club has increased manifold. “We sparked people’s interest in a new kind of cinema,” says Rajgolkar. “Now,they come with demands of specific films to be shown in film club screenings. Bahman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly has been a huge hit,inviting the maximum number of requests.”