Yesterday,
attended a significant event on 'Independent Filmmaking' in Coimbatore, Tamil
Nadu. It was a seminar organized by the Cinema Club of Coimbatore initiated by
our friend and director Kamala Kannan ('Madhubaanakadai' - Liquor Shop). The
key focus of the event was on the Alternative way or the Independent way of
making, producing and distributing films in India, more specifically, revolving
around Tamil Cinema. Naveen, the director of the recently released 'Moodar
Koodam' shared his experiences and challenges of his film's Independent mode of
production. When he talked about his film, it was as if he was talking about our
film “500 & 5 - Ayynoorum Ayynthum's” production, same struggles, same
goof-ups, same everything, it was kind of surreal. And Nalan Kumarasamy, the
director of the Tamil hit film 'Soodhu Kavvum' spoke about his experiences of
writing(mainly) and directing his films. And finally, the thing that we at
Accessible Horizon Films could relate to the most, was Kamala Kannan's ideas
on the challenges and resolution(hopefully) of alternatively distributing an
Independent film. What we can basically take away from this event are some very
interesting alternative thoughts on the future of Tamil and Indian Independent
Cinema, which I will write about shortly. And the most startling thing about
this was, there were more 200 filmmakers with different levels of experience
who attended the event. For a while now, we, at Accessible Horizon Film
Collective, have been discussing similar issues with some radically creative
people (both filmmakers and various artists) on the future of
Indie(Independent) Filmmaking in India. So, hopefully, this is all a step in
the right direction. The very fact that there are things like these happening
is a sign of more progressive cinema coming up AND reaching the audience. (Above is a production still from 'Ayynoorum Ayynthum)
