Towards progressive Independent Tamil Cinema?

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)