Reeling them in

In a remote village in North India, the only Dalit child getting an education returns home on vacation and discovers his younger brother’s infatuation with an upper-caste girl. To help the budding romance, the teenager writes a love letter on his illiterate brother’s behalf. What happens after the letter is delivered forms the climax of Bikas Mishra’s first film, Chauranga. The movie is based on a real-life incident in 2008 in Bihar, and will be shot in the Jharkhand village where Mishra spent his childhood. But it has found its voice in faraway Europe. The script was refined at the Binger Film Lab in Notre Dame; Sweden’s Göteborg International Film Festival has invested ₹10 lakh in developing the screenplay; and German production house Pong is putting in ₹1.5 crore and will take care of post-production work on the film.

It’s not the only Indian film that is being made with international assistance. Anurag Kashyap Films’ upcoming release Monsoon Shootout is a typical underworld thriller. But the script was developed by the British Film Institute, which spent about ₹50 lakh on the task. The satellite rights have been pre-sold to French broadcaster Arte France for ₹1.5 crore, and international distribution rights to film sales company Fortissimo Films. Dutch private equity investor Pardesi Films has also funded the nearly $2-million (₹10 crore) project.

Call it the slumdog effect, but global audiences are slowly waking up to an Indian film scene that goes beyond the band-baaja of traditional Bollywood fare. And that is working out very well for indie film producers here. They are able to raise much-needed funds by taking on overseas partners as co-producers as well as through other unconventional methods. 

Tough for indies

Consider The Lunchbox, produced by Guneet Monga of Anurag Kashyap Films, the production house that is fast becoming the poster child of independent Hindi films. Made as an Indo-American venture, the film was shown at the world’s oldest co-production market, CineMart in Rotterdam, last month and was short-listed to be shown at the Berlin International Film Festival. “I will meet a host of sales agents, script experts and distributors and I am confident that in the next week or so I will have my entire funding in place,” says Monga confidently. 

Finding angels in India would be infinitely more difficult. The ₹50,000-crore Indian film industry, even after the entry of studios such as Eros, UTV and Reliance that also look at low-budget films, is skewed towards big-budget, big-star productions. And they don’t exactly roll out the red carpet when indie producers making non-mainstream movies with a no-name cast seek funding assistance. Director Onir recalls how he approached all the big studios when he was making I am, a film on sexual abuse. “None of them wanted to support me,” he says.

Finally, Onir raised ₹1.5 crore through anonymous patrons on Facebook and Twitter, and made the first South Asian movie that got crowd-funding. Still, you can’t really blame the studios for being wary of art house-ish movies. More than box-office sales, they count on sales of satellite broadcast rights to bring in the bounty — and if there’s no ‘star’ attraction, broadcasters and overseas distributors shy away. Indeed, Onir is yet to find a buyer for the satellite rights to I am and since the movie made only around ₹1 crore in ticket sales, it is still in the red.  

Shoestring no more

So it’s probably lucky that international film funds and festivals have started showing interest in the ‘other’ films that India makes. Mainstream movies like Ra.One, Don 2, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and My Name is Khan have been released not only in countries with large expat populations, but also diverse regions like Iceland, Algeria, Damascus and Serbia. Documentaries and art house films stand an even better chance of appealing to an international audience since their sensibilities are more in tune with Western cinematic trends and the issues they raise resonate with a global audience. At the Dubai film festival in December, there were over 11 entries from Indian film-makers; and about four each at the Berlin and Toronto festival in August 2011. 

The interest goes beyond just watching the films. The film fund of the Rotterdam International Film Festival funds 30-35 documentaries and an equal number of fiction films every year. Last year, at least 10 were from India. Previous recipients include Satish Manwar’s Marathi film on farmer suicides and Aamir Bashir’s Harud (2010). “India is a country with fantastic stories and is attracting global attention in a big way,” concurs Rada Sesic, the festival’s project advisor. 

Global corporate interest in Indian cinema, too, is building. Last year, Berlin-based film co-production consultancy Primehouse launched an Indo-European co-production workshop Primexchange, funded 70% by the European Union’s Media Mundus programme. A few years ago, London-headquartered PE firm Dar Capital launched a ₹250-crore Indian film fund, which has financed movies like Vikram Bhatt’s Haunted. Of the six releases it has lined up for this year, four are indie productions (two with Anurag Kashyap Films and two with Sudhir Mishra). “I am confident that once we release a couple of films in global markets, we will be able to realise the full value of our investment,” says Arun Rangachari, chairman, Dar Capital. 

That’s not all. Yogesh Karikurve, founder of Magus Entertainment, who has been distributing Indian documentaries and indie fiction films in Europe for the past two years, is working on a film-financing platform, in association with the EU, for Indian fiction and documentary film-makers. While still at the drawing-board stage, Karikurve, who earlier headed the international distribution vertical for Reliance Entertainment, believes there’s immense potential for film-funding in India, both from domestic as well as global companies and institutions. “Though Indian content has global acceptance, most film-makers have neither the means to make films nor the ability to take their work to a global audience. I am trying to bridge the gap through the platform,” he says. 

There isn’t much state support in India for cinema unlike, say, the EU where some 30 funds support films from across the world. Still, the National Film Development Corp (NFDC) has been doing its bit to bring Indian film-makers to the notice of global financiers. Since 2007, it has hosted an annual co-production and distribution event, Film Bazaar, at Goa. “The intention to set up the co-production segment was driven by the fact that, increasingly, collaborations at an international level start at the production stage to enable films to travel beyond national territories,” says Nina Lath, MD, NFDC. 

The 2011 edition of Film Bazaar had 635 delegates from 40 countries and some 23 projects were explored at the four-day event. In the past, several small films have bagged finance and co-producers from around the world, including Ocean of an Old Man, which got funding from the Busan Film Fund; The Ship of Theseus, where Fortissimo Films picked up the worldwide rights; Nobel Chor, which this year sold its Australia and New Zealand rights to 7Seas Films; and Shankar Shambu, where British producer Chris Auty came on board as co-producer. 

Online angels

Some film-makers consciously stay away from studios and corporate sponsors, citing greater independence and control over content, distribution and revenue. But pursuing a dream doesn’t come cheap and, usually, there’s only so much funding friends and family can provide.

Which is why film-makers are turning to the same people they hope will pay to see their work: their audience. ‘Crowdfunding’ in the film industry dates back to 2004 when an internet donation campaign yielded $50,000 for a French film. In India, Onir raised ₹1.5 crore in 2011 from 53 people across the world for I am. The first cheque of ₹1,000 was from a student while the highest contribution was ₹15 lakh from Humsafar Trust, which became the film’s executive producer. 

How does crowdfunding work? Typically, the film-maker puts up the script or synopsis of his film on social media and crowdfunding sites and asks for assistance. Anybody can fund as much as they want and a community is created to support the project. Most contributors chip in for the warm, fuzzy feeling but, typically, large donors are rewarded for their largesse: film-related merchandise, credit on the website or the film, or even a percentage of the profits. 

Documentary film-makers in India are turning eagerly to crowdfunding. Miriam Chandy Menacherry of Filament Pictures is a case in point. When she decided to make an independent documentary on Mumbai’s rat-catchers, she entered a contest, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, for the most promising documentary film by an upcoming film-maker. Menacherry’s five-minute trailer won and she got a waiver on the ₹3-lakh entry fee for screening the film at Cannes the following year. 

Back home, Menacherry set up a website, ratracetocannes.com, with a Facebook link and invited people to contribute. She raised close to ₹4 lakh in cash and an equivalent sum in sweat equity, with professionals like cameramen offering their services for free. Finally, Menacherry also got a finishing funding of €12,000 from Amsterdam’s Jan Vrijman Fund.

Are these examples one-offs or can crowdfunding work in India? Globally, crowdfunding is big business, slated to cross $6 billion by next year. There are over 400 websites that raise cash for a variety of causes, of which the most visible are Kickstarter, Indiego and Interactor. Mumbai-based VC firm Springboard Ventures is all set to bring Interactor to India. Sceptics believe crowdfunding is a passing fad. “The biggest challenge for films made from external funding is the imperative to perform. If the films don’t do well, the euphoria will die out,” says Rangachari of Dar Capital. Adds Magus’ Karikurve, “Crowdfunding platforms will have to spend on educating people and creating awareness. Indians normally don’t believe in philanthropy unless it has to do with God or a social cause.”

Satish Kataria, the outgoing MD of Springboard Ventures, takes the opposite view. He says crowdfunding platforms bring on board distribution and marketing partners so that film-makers seeking funding get an end-to-end solution. “We are working hard to make the platform credible,” he says. That includes finding innovative solutions to regulatory hurdles. In the US, Kataria says, crowdfunding of up to $2 million doesn’t require accreditation. “In India, investing large sums on a platform like this can be questioned.”

Springboard is working around that by offering tangible rewards for contributions, so that the transaction can be seen as the sale of premium film-related merchandise. For investments over ₹5 lakh, investors will be entitled to a share of the profits, for which a special purpose vehicle is created. “The IPR will be retained by the SPV,” he adds.

For film-makers, there’s only one major risk with crowdfunding: that of their idea getting stolen or copied since they put it out in the open. But since such fund raising is usually the last-resort for offbeat films that aren’t likely to become commercial successes, the chances of that happening seem low.