For Nancy Gerstman, co-president and co-founder of the New York-based distribution company Zeitgeist Films, US distributor of Chaitanya Tamhane’s Marathi movie Court , the many significant awards the film has amassed internationally (18 at the last count), would prove to be its big ticket at the Oscars this year. “A lot of people already know about it, there is a positive buzz around it,” she told The Hindu on a visit to the National Film Development Corporation’s Film Bazaar in Panjim, Goa.
Producer Vivek Gomber concurs. He feels that the “incredibly rewarding” journey of the film has helped amass the kind of curiosity and interest that no amount of PR or publicity could have managed to whip up for it. But he also admits that he can’t merely rely on merit, especially because competition in the foreign films category is the toughest of the lot. “How do you translate the good vibe for the film into something tangible? Awareness helps but we have to be realistic and practical as well. If we are in the competition, we have to give it our best shot, no one wants to be in a competition just for the heck of it,” says Vivek. So, though his Oscar budget might be much smaller than that of Aamir Khan’s Lagaan back in 2002, Vivek is following a similar tried and tested formula to get his film noticed by the Academy.
He is not willing to put a number to his budget. All he says is that it is a “pretty fair and decent investment”. A reputed publicist – Joshua Jason – has already been hired in LA to promote the film. “We were lucky to have locked him swiftly, considering there would be 80 other films vying to get the same guys,” he says.
One screening of the film was organised by the Academy last week, which elicited mixed reactions. There will be a concerted effort to create awareness about future screenings. Ads for them will be out in the trade papers like Variety and Hollywood Reporter . The film has made it to the LA Times list of 13 front runners. It has been written about quite glowingly in The New York Times, The New Yorker and Indiewire . What it needs is support from prominent people, a little help in getting the good word out. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer of The Act of Killing fame has been one such champion and tweeted some days back: “India’s Oscar entry, Court by Chaitanya Tamhane, is a masterpiece – a work of deepest empathy, sublime in its construction”. Vivek, however, prefers to be cautious than get carried away by such high praise.
“We are still learning the whole Oscar process,” he says. He, along with director Chaitanya Tamhane, will be in Los Angeles for promotional interviews for four-five days, from December 7 onwards. “The whole plan is to maximise awareness-building towards the end,” says Vivek. December 17 is when the shortlist of nine films for each of the categories will be announced and on January 14, the five nominees will be revealed.
A biting satire on the legal system of India and on issues of class, caste, culture, language and divisive politics, Court has already had a long theatrical run in the US in 65 cities.
It will be out on iTunes on December 1 and will have a “robust” digital release, says Gerstman. Zeitgeist is known to be picky about its Indie projects. It chooses only 5-6 films a year and hasn’t zoomed in on any Indian film other than Court and three Indo-Canadian projects – Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Earth and Richie Mehta’s Siddharth .
Their catalogue includes the world’s finest independent filmmakers including Agnes Varda, Olivier Assayas, Jia Zhang-ke, Atom Egoyan, Abbas Kiarostami, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Peter Greenaway. Zeitgeist’s films have received five Academy Award nominations and one win, for Best Foreign Language Film for Nowhere In Africa . Now, it remains to be seen whether Court adds itself to that list.
