There seems to be nothing like the movies to revive memories of home, especially for this bunch of enterprising young Malayali expatriates who live and work in the United States (U.S.). Childhood friends Liju Mathew, Navin Thomas, Nirun Raju, Abraham Kuruvilla, Bijo Thomas, Sreyas Job, Sherry Thomas and Jayaprakash, have now taken their love for Malayalam cinema a step further and started The Cinema Factory, a film distribution company for Malayalam movies in the U.S.
“We know each other through the ‘Trivandrum connection,’” says Liju, a software engineer at Cognizant in Connecticut. Seven of the eight-member team are natives of the city and six of them are former classmates at St. Thomas schools. Bijo is a former student of Sarvodaya Vidyalaya and Sreyas is a native of Kozhikode, who studied at Mar Ivanios College. Except for Abraham, a pharmacist, Nirun, a business major, and Sherry, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, all the rest are engineers and they all have been in the U.S. for over five years now.
But, film distribution…? Says Navin, who is currently in the city on vacation: “We love going to the movies. Most of us live in the Connecticut-New Jersey-New York area and we get together almost every other weekend. We often drive upwards of an hour to our local Malayali theatre – Maveli Twin Cinema in Rockland, New York just to catch the latest Malayalam release.” Then the theatre shut down and Liju, Navin and Nirun were quite miffed that they had no means of watching a new release on the big screen. Adds Liju via email: “On a whim late one night in July last year, I asked Navin if he could ask director-actor Vineeth Sreenivasan, who was his classmate at Hindustan College of Engineering, Chennai, about distributing Thattathin Marayathu (TM) in the U.S. Vineeth agreed. We had no clue about film distribution, but within 48 hours, after talking to Vinod ettan (Vinod Shornur of LJ Films, the distributor of TM), the deal was sealed, and The Cinema Factory was up and running! The rest of the group expressed interest in being a part of the venture and the subsequent four weeks were a mad race trying to understand the trade and how it works here.”
That TM was a hit in Kerala came as a boon to the newbie film distributors. Thanks to satellite TV and the Internet, everyone was well aware of the movie and they capitalised on it from the word go.
The group was also savvy enough to capitalise on social media, using Facebook as their primary tool to get the word out there. “The Cinema Factory is here because of the social media. Most of us are avid Facebook users and we knew that any business that relies on advertising had to use it,” says Liju.
Their biggest hurdle, they say, is marketing. Even with all the social networking, a fair majority of cinema-goers there would not realise that a particular movie is releasing. So they advertise new films nearly a fortnight in advance by putting up posters in local Indian stories, ads on local Malayalam newspapers, and, of course, with online promos.
Apparently, TM’s success also helped open up several new centres for screening across the U.S. “Usually, Malayalam films get released in the U.S. in four major centres – Chicago, New Jersey, the Bay Area (in and around San Franciso, Oakland and San Jose), and Texas, where there are a sizeable population of Malayalis. Thanks to TM’s popularity we were able to release the film in cities such as Indianapolis and Bloomington, where there are relatively less number of Malayali families, and also smaller towns such as Woodland Hills in Los Angeles, where there are a lot of techies who work at UST Global,” says Navin, who works at ASW Inc. in Connecticut. Liju claims that today, Malayalam films get released in more cities in the U.S. than before because of TM. A Malayalam movie usually runs for three to four months in the U.S., at the most a week at each place it is released. “The rush is mostly on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays,” says Navin. Thattathin Marayathu , for example, was screened from July to November, and The Cinema Factory’s second release Molly Aunty Rocks , which the group say “clicked big time among Malayalis who have been settled here for a long time”, ran from September to November. Currently, 101 Weddings is doing the rounds. “Business is great until the DVD release happens back home and pirated versions are available online,” says Navin.
The Cinema Factory is by no means the only player in the field in the U.S. or even the lead distributor there. But the youngsters believe that there are a few things that make then stand out from the crowd. “We are unlike the rest of the players in the business, because we’re not looking at releasing a whole lot of movies just to consolidate our position as the next big thing. We’re only interested in picking up movies that would provide wholesome entertainment to the Malayali Diaspora. The Malayali film-going audience in the U.S. is a lot different from that in Kerala; it’s still very much a star driven market here. And we’re looking at changing that and trying to get the audience accustomed to the trends in Malayalam cinema,” says Liju.
And what about the future... Film production? Says Liju: “We keep joking to each other about producing a film under The Cinema Factory banner but we’re not actively working towards it. It might just happen someday. For now, we’re working to make a short film just for the heck of it. Enthusiastic people can contact us if they’re willing to work for free!” Navin adds with a laugh: “Hey, we’re just out to have fun!” Contact: thecinemafactory@ymail.com
