Streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon are disruptive for traditional channels, but they also offer a very interesting business model, noted Australian movie producer Jamie Hilton said.
Hilton, the producer of internationally acclaimed films like 'Sleeping beauty' (2011), The Waiting (2009), Breath (2017) said Australian cinema is not insulated from the challenges posed by the digital world.
"But such platforms give new opportunities and new materials and throw up new business models which are very challenging. Now, the time has come when the consumer can think what kind of film he can see on Amazon and Netflix and I think the situation is the same here as well," he said at the Kolkata Internationa;l Film Festival (KIFF).
Soeaking on the links between Kolkata and Australia, Hilton went 10 years back when he came here to film 'The Waiting City' made by Sydney-based writer-director Claire McCarthy and produced by him.
"Our relations go back long. We were in kolkata 10 years ago. And it is very lovely to come back at KIFF. It is a great privilege," he said.
Australia is the theme country at the film festival.
He said the Australian film industry is smaller than the 'huge' film industry in India.
"We make 30-40 films every year in Austrlia, we make English language films - and our movies are more in the independent (genre)," he said.
Hilton said Austrlian movies account for five per cent of box office collections whereas international movies occupy the rest.
"Our audiences don't discriminate if a movie has been made in Australia or in America. The ticket cost and the expectation from both films are the same," Hilton explained.
"When people go to watch a movie they want to get emotional experience as a big or small budget movie, a difference in size of the budget, don't make much difference to the audience who need to get the human story first," Hilton said.
Since very few independent Australian films are made compared to American and European films, they have a much smaller market share, he said.
In India, with so many languages apart from Hindi, the situation was different as the audiences back different types of films in their own language.
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