Fade out fade in

a market for Indian short films and documentaries but it's largely on the net, as two home-video distribution companies are discovering.

There is not much of a market for short films and documentaries in India. Few people want to see them, and fewer still get to see them. So home-video companies dedicated to shorts, docus and award-winning regional films that, moreover, rely largely on on-sales would, seem to have little going for them.

But Rudraa Entertainment, a start-up by two intrepid film professionals, Kailashnath J Koppikar and Subhash Chheda, has been around for two years now and business is slowly picking up.

You also have year-old Syncline Filmstore, a venture by Delhi-based video production and distribution company, Syncline Films, which started out with around 150 documentaries produced by PSBT and Prasar Bharti, and is now inviting independent filmmakers to come on board.

It's a tough going, says Chheda, with high costs of buying copyrights, mastering, authoring, replication, inlay design and, most important, promotion. "We must have distributed 20,000 brochures at the Goa international film festival."

Despite all the difficulties, however, the two companies have compiled a weighty catalogue. Syncline has Fiddlers on the Thatch, Trisha Das's moving story of the Gandhi Ashram School in Kalimpong, The Lijjat Sisterhood, Ladies Special "" all national award winners.

Rudraa has Anant Patwardhan's In the name of God besides national award-winning films like KS Sethumadhavan's Marupakkam, and a whole load of classic Marathi films by makers like Amol Palekar, Sumitra Bhave, and so on.

But the highlight of the Rudraa catalogue is Master Strokes, a 2-DVD set of 20 acclaimed diploma films by FTII alumni who've made it big in the film world.

Released in July last year, it has Madan Bavaria's Suman (Jaya Bhaduri's first screen appearance), Arun Khopkar's Teevra Madhyam which marked Smita Patil's debut, Girish Kasaravalli's Awashesh, Kundan Shah's Bonga and Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Murder at Monkey Hill.

The collection is a best-seller, whether because of its curiosity value or cinematic merits, and has sold more than 2,000 copies.

Rudraa has now ventured into marketing-communication advisory services for independent filmmakers, and recently finalized a deal to supply content to TVofIndia.com, a video-on-demand company that specializes in Indian content in the US.

Off-line, Rudraa has managed to stock its content in around 300 video-rental libraries all over the country.

Syncline is talking to India Habitat Centre to have a counter there during film shows. Institutional sales, especially universities in India and abroad, are other major customers.

But this will be Syncline's first off-line avenue as online is where the company's thrust is.

"Most of our promotional activities are concentrated on the web, for example search-engine optimisation. If you now key in Indian documentary purchase, you're sure to get us," says Rajarshi Sengupta, editor at Syncline Films. Rudraa, similarly, has a microsite on e-bay for online sales.

Clearly, online is the more cost-effective way to reach out to an audience interested in their fare.