If it weren’t for short films, we wouldn’t have films such as Jigarthanda , Pizza and Soodhu Kavvum , and Karthik Subbaraj isn’t one to forget this. Three days have passed since the release of Bench Talkies , a collection of six short films distributed by his Stone Bench Creations, and the initiative is an achievement, considering popular theatres such as Sathyam Cinemas and PVR are screening it. However, this is not the first time Karthik has tried to make this happen. “Even during my short film days, I approached theatres with the idea of playing them during the interval. They thought it was problematic to screen an offbeat short film in between a commercial film,” he says.
What peeved him was that the very same films found takers in other countries. His 2011 short film, Black and White , for instance, was screened at the Tokyo Film Festival, and its rights snapped up for a period of five years. “Other countries are open to purchasing foreign short films because they have a market for them.” Short film makers are to be blamed too, says Karthik. Hundreds of short films get uploaded on YouTube, with most of them failing to evoke interest. “When I was making short films for the TV show Naalaya Iyakunar , I wasn’t just competing but making films that I could potentially show at international festivals. A short film is not a shortened feature film. It has a soul of its own,” he says.
The lukewarm reception to short films in India continued to bother him even after he became a successful feature filmmaker. There were gifted short filmmakers out there without anybody to finance their work. And then, he saw what the other states were doing. “Short film anthologies such as Bombay Talkies and 5 Sundarikal seemed like great ideas. I wanted a similar one in Tamil.” Karthik, arguably the biggest success story from the Tamil short film circuit, now had a plan.
His company chose six short films (including one of his starring Vijay Sethupathi) by directors such as Anil Krishnan, Gopakumar, Charukesh Sekar, Monesh, and Rathanakumar.
The only criterion for the selection — the films needed to have the soul of a short. “We didn’t want people shooting them as a gimmick. I won’t be surprised if all of these go on to become feature films,” he says. The audio of these films has been digitally mastered, and the video scaled up to suit the big screen.
The plan is to share part of the revenue with the directors. This is “the first bench”, as Karthik calls it. “We’ll release two more anthologies in the next few months, titled Bench Talkies – The Second Bench and Bench Talkies – The Third Bench .” He hopes that audiences will soon learn that films don’t always have to be two hours long. The aim is to ensure that short film directors don’t get disheartened by the lack of funding. Karthik should know this, considering he spent at least Rs. 3-4 lakh making his short films. Not once did he think it was in vain though. “I had a passion for the short; a passion I hope Stone Bench will salvage in similar-minded filmmakers.”
