When Vinay Mishra, founder of HumaraMovie, realised that out of 15,000 films censored in India every year, 11,000 were short films, he was determined to find an avenue for shorts to see the light of day on the big screen. On August 15, his pet project ‘Shuruaat – Ek Interval,’ a 98-minute compilation of short films mentored by Imtiaz Ali, Anand Gandhi, Vikramaditya Motwane and Vikas Bahl, will release across the country through PVR Director’s Rare.
“When we called for entries, we insisted that filmmakers should have made shorts before. We got 400 entries and shortlisted 53. We then sat with the mentors and asked for scripts based on the idea of an Interval. We got 46 scripts,” says Vinay.
An external agency shortlisted the films and 12 were chosen to be mentored by Ali, Gandhi, Motwane and Bahl — three filmmakers per mentor. “The filmmakers had physical meetings with their mentors first and then continued discussions over email because the mentors were travelling. We also provided casting support through casting director Mukesh Chabbra,” Vinay explains.
At the end of the brainstorming, the mentors told HumaraMovie that maybe the contest should allow the others who have submitted scripts to go make their films too and the final eight films could be picked purely on merit, irrespective of whether they were mentored or not.
Twenty-six films were then shot and eight were picked for the theatrical release. The chosen films are between seven and 15 minutes in length. “In the final eight, we have a combination of both mentored films and films made without mentorship. We then provided marketing and packaging support, got the film censored as one bouquet, and brought PVR on board to release the film. Once we recover the money we have invested in the film, the rest of the revenue will be split with the filmmakers.”
After the theatrical release, HumaraMovie plans to include a few more films from the contest for home video release and all films will be available online through the HumaraMovie channel that boasts of 37,000 subscribers.
“We are also giving a Rs.1 lakh cash prize for the film rated highest by the audience in the theatres. Each theatre will have a mechanism through which people can vote for the best film of the bunch,” says Vinay. “Filmmakers are free to make feature films out of these shorts and we have only asked for the first right of refusal.”
