Two minutes and 26 seconds is all it took to create a flutter of excitement and Raam Reddy’s much acclaimed film Thithi is back in the news again. May 6 has been fixed as the date of the film’s theatrical release in Karnataka and the 2:26 minute trailer, crafted and cut by Raam himself, is now out online. Soon, hand-stitched posters will be unveiled. “The idea is to make something real. I wanted a work of art to represent a work of art. It took months to make the posters and the trailer,” says an elated but nervous Reddy.
He may not have anticipated the fabulous journey his film undertook from the global stage to the local market, but he believes that he is just receiving the dividends to the quality he invested in the film. “There is an economics to the quality. Today, the number of good global productions is large. If you are committed to your craft and can hold your film technically, then you can handle the massive competition. We spent time on our shoot and invested in the quality of the film and that is paying dividends,” he says.
He goes on to say that the problem with Indian productions is that they try to shoot too quickly, lose quality in the process and the economics of quality will not allow them to release it. “This is particular to independent and content driven films and not commercial cinema which have their own logic,” he adds.
“India makes more films than any other country. The statistics of the films that get released, the films that make money and films in general are so skewed towards failure that it shocks me that there are so many producers and films being made. Business-wise, it is a big risk, but it is just that the perks are sometimes large enough to get one excited to try it. I think the economics of film needs to shift to the economics of quality and then the film will survive on its own strength, not on connections or anything else.”
What will it take for this shift to happen?
“I think it will take producers who will trust the directors’ vision. If it is a first time director, then he needs to have proved himself in his previous work. Normally, short films are a good low budget indicator of a filmmaker’s abilities. Chaitanya Tamhane, Neeraj Ghaywan of Masaan fame and I- we’ve all had a critically-acclaimed short film to our credit. Also, those signing on as producers of the film will have to be able to position and craft it on a global scale which is important too.”
Even with all this in mind, Reddy says he could not have foreseen the journey that Thithi finally undertook. “When we started, it was all about making the film the way we wanted. We were only keen on keeping certain elements like warmth, humour, narrative, character focus etc. I believe that for good cinema, if you maintain these things, then regardless of who the filmmaker is, the film will be watched,” says Reddy.
With no film connections whatsoever and with the backing of an in-house (family) production house, “The first thing that changed our strength, the make-up and our image was Film Bazaar. I took the film to the Bazaar in the rough cut stage and we were lucky to get the film into the Work in Progress lab.”
It was there that Thithi , in its much longer version, found its co-producer in Sunmin Park who has been associated with Hollywood projects such as The Others starring Nicole Kidman, Wonderful Days , A Night in Old Mexico and so on. “We won the Best Film at Film Bazaar and we had global eyes on us. Co-producers generally don’t sign on so late in the life of a film but we were lucky.”
“Ideally, I’d recommend independent filmmakers to take their films at the script stage to the Bazaar and find a co-producer there. You need a permanent producer even before you go to the Bazaar. The goal is to find a co-producer to help you with the international scene.”
