| Last month, film aficionados gathered at The Reader's Shop in Juhu to watch Manjuben Truckdriver, Sherna Dastur's documentary about a female truckdriver who has bravely set new rules in the gender game. |
| Manjuben is a male-woman driving on the country's highways, wearing male clothes, shaving and slapping buddies on the back and hers is a gripping story indeed. |
| But even a couple of years ago, this story would have been necessarily told at poorly-attended film festivals, perhaps as a hewed version of the original. But Dastur and many other short filmmakers like her in the country today are lucky. Their works can now be accessed by viewers on the shelves of local video parlours. |
| With film buffs acquiring more catholic tastes, the supply side is indeed revving up. The Sarvodaya DVD library in Khar has, for some time, been the destination for anyone with a taste for esoteric fare. |
| The clientele ranges from Bollywood badshahs to film school students and they're quick on the uptake when it comes to new releases and films in different languages. |
| For instance, they were one of the first in the city to receive Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, barely two weeks after its release. Then, there's the British Council library with a diverse collection of 3,000 plus DVDs that includes documentary features. |
| According to Girish Kunkur, head of library and information services, it's been tough to keep up with the demand for titles. "We're the busiest British Council Library in the world," he adds. The clincher? It costs only Rs 1,900 a year for unlimited access and you can keep the DVDs for up to two weeks at a time, a rare liberty. |
| Then, there are some people who have taken on the cause of the short film, a neglected format, long considered commercially unviable. Riyaaz Amlani, the promoter of the popular Mocha cafe, picked up on this vacuum and started the Mocha film club three years ago. |
| The club still meets on the first Wednesday of every month. From a small gathering of cinephiles who'd watch shorts and swap critical commentary over cups of Java, the audience has grown manifold so much so that the original venue had to be changed. |
| The club has now shifted to 35 mm-format sessions at Fame Adlabs in Andheri.The mission for Amlani was to provide short filmmakers with the same platforms as their big-budget counterparts; the coffee and popcorn were add-ons. |
| But there is no city-based authority on documentaries and short films more valued than Vikalp. Following the organisation of a wave of protests against censorship diktats of the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) for documentaries and shorts, Vikalp was formed, championed by independent filmmaker Rakesh Sharma. |
| Vikalp, Films For Freedom India, is today a platform for over 300 Indian documentary filmmakers. In 2004, it established its own annual festival of documentary films that would run parallel to the MIFF "" but without the censoring. |
| Another outlet that is shouldering the responsibility of dozens of faceless (and venue-less) filmmakers in the docu and shorts categories is The Reader's Shop, a book shop in Juhu owned by Rehana |
| Munir. In association with Vikalp, Munir has treated viewers to fortnightly screenings of short films. The store can't accommodate more than 40 viewers but every screening finds more takers. "It's more than we can take," says Munir, obviously pleased. |
| She's also in the process of setting up a counter to sell DVDs of the films screened. "We stick to Indian shorts because we like having the ability to invite filmmakers and editors over for an audience interaction," says Munir. |
| It's still, unfortunately, just as hard as it used to be for non-feature films to get commercial distribution and release in India. Remember Ashwin Kumar's 15-minute film Little Terrorist that failed to generate much excitement even when it was nominated for the 2005 Oscar in the short film genre? For now, exposure will have to be restricted to DVD distribution and private screenings. |
| WHERE TO GET YOUR DVDS |
| British Council Mittal Towers, 'C' Wing, 2nd Floor Nariman Point, Mumbai Tel: 22790 112 |
| Sarvodaya Video Centre 21, Dr Ambedkar Road, Khar (W), Mumbai Tel: 2648-0066 |
| The Reader's shop 1/2, Crystal Housing Society, Next to Santa Cruz police station Juhu road, Santa Cruz, Mumbai Tel: 26461655 |
| Vikalp www.freedomfilmsindia.org |
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