Five women, a movie and corporate funding

IN CONVERSATION

Actor director AMOL PALEKAR is experimenting with corporate funding for his upcoming English/Marathi bilingual movie "" Quest or Thaang "" which explores sexuality and men-women relationships. Funded by Gufi Multimedia, a company setup by five women entrepreneurs from the information technology sector, the movie is actually backed by six women, Palekar tells Business Standard.

How did you get six women to back the taboo subject of relationships and sexuality?

Gufi Multimedia was formed with an objective of exploring topics and issues that are not mainstream and are related to women.

The producers are five women living across three continents "" Uma Ganesh, CEO, Kalzoom Technologies; Carla Contractor, a Brazilian living in the UK; Padma Rao from Chicago and Mumbai; Vahini Saradhi from New Jersey and Hyderabad; and Shweta Mohapatra from Chennai. The sixth woman is my wife, and screenplay and dialogue writer, Sandhya Kulkarni.

Not many directors are comfortable with corporate financing. What do you feel?

I am a professional, albeit on the creative side, and they are professionals, period. This has been a very successful partnership. The binding force was professionalism, and their trust in my capabilities. Thaang will become a model for directors to consider corporate funding.

Can you tell us about the upcoming movie?

It is a very contemporary and urban movie meant for a crossborder audience in India and other English speaking countries. The movie stars Mrinal Kulkarni, Rishi Deshpande, Shishir Sharma, Sonali Kulkarni and Pramila, a 92 year-old woman who was India's first beauty queen. It is almost wrapped up, and will be released here next month.

Are you looking at a global release?

We are in talks with distributors in the US, Canada and Australia and will release the movie there as well, eventually.

Where does Thaang fit in your portfolio vis-a-vis your previous work?

Thaang completes my trilogy of exploring men-women relationships, the earlier two being Daayraa released in 1996 followed by Anaahat in 2003. With Quest my journey evolves further to explore men-women relationships and sexuality.