Over the years, several amateur filmmakers have given up their dream of film-making for want of support , both financially and culturally. This year at the IFFK, one found a number of success stories — how new age filmmakers found their way through the struggle and managed to bring out films, just the way they had envisioned. For, they believed the ‘Do It Yourself revolution’ had begun.
At the Meet the Director, organised as part of the International Film Festival of Kerala 2012 on Tuesday, directors Raghu Jeganathan, K.M. Kamal and their team would clearly agree that the advent of new media had played a big role in such a revolution.
The team of the Hindi film ID was not ready to compromise their belief on how their movie should be. Though it was a 15-year struggle, the team did finally succeed. Going through a similar experience, the team of the Tamil movie 500 & 5 did not budge and refused to compromise with their script, even when they were financially challenged.
According to the director of 500 & 5 , Raghu Jeganathan , if it was not for the social media , many would not have been able to tell their stories the way they wanted to.
“Amateur filmmakers will have to face many challenges. The industry still supports large-scale projects and many producers would want to compromise the kind of vision that we want to put forth in a movie. However, the Internet and YouTube enabled independent filmmakers to come up with their own films. They were no longer in need of support from a producer to fulfil their vision,” said Mr.Jeganathan.
Editor Ajith Kumar, who has worked on the film ID , attributed the combined effort of the team and their unified vision for the success of their film.
“Help came from all sides, many took more than one role with a faith that the effort would be worth it. However , I sincerely hope that such ventures keep happening and do not reduce to a one-time wonder”, added Mr.Kumar.
