The Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC) has come up with a proposal with an estimated budget of Rs.100 crore for revamping the State government-owned Chitranjali Studio at Thiruvallam, said KSFDC chairman Lenin Rajendran at a press conference here. The proposal was part of the corporation’s initiative to facilitate the growth of Malayalam cinema, he said.
The plan includes suggestions for the construction of a state-of-the-art film city, a part-virtual forest area for children’s entertainment, a cinema-related light-and-sound show, eco-friendly cottages, a museum of Malayalam cinema, and a food court that offers a wide array of cuisines.
The film city will be equipped with ultra-modern shooting floors and instruments and will rival the best studios in India. The light-and-sound show, modelled on the shows at the Akshardham temple in Delhi, will depict great actors and movies in Malayalam. The museum at Chitranjali will also be modified and equipped with advanced technology.
The corporation also aims at taking advantage of the scenic location of the studio by building around 40 eco-friendly cottages for the use of film-making crews and film festival delegates.
A sum of Rs.25 crore of the estimated Rs.100 crore has been granted so far, and the revamp project is under way.
IFFK complex
Apart from this, the KSFDC has chosen the studio as the tentative location for building a film festival complex, intended especially for conducting the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). The complex, to be constructed jointly with the Kerala State Chalachithra Academy, is envisaged to comprise an international convention centre that can seat around 2,500 people, another hall with a capacity of 1,000 seats and around six theatres, apart from dormitories and green rooms. The festival complex is intended to be a venue for performing arts as well.
The tentative budget for construction of the festival complex is around Rs.100 crore.
Combating piracy
The KSFDC also plans to build 100 theatres with capacities between 100 and 200 seats in two years, in order to create more venues for screening acclaimed movies. These theatres will be opened all over the State, in urban and rural areas. Around 40 local self-government bodies have granted land for the same.
Suggestions were also made to combat online film piracy by official online releases and the establishment of anti-piracy cells at the district level.
Other proposals included a projection system for transmitting films to theatres from a centralised server via optical fibre cables, a single-window system to facilitate assistance for film-makers in obtaining government permissions and so on, revision of existing subsidy rules for short films and documentaries, and the revision of the Cinema Regulation Act.
