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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  After regional cinema, dialect cinema waits for its share of the spotlight
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After regional cinema, dialect cinema waits for its share of the spotlight

A new segment can be added to the regular classification of Indian cinema as Bollywood and regional: dialect cinema

Vainkatesh Kunchi Kurve directed ‘Pakaranina’ as an account of the issues being faced by people of his community. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/MintPremium
Vainkatesh Kunchi Kurve directed ‘Pakaranina’ as an account of the issues being faced by people of his community. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint

Mumbai: A new segment can be added to the regular classification of Indian cinema as Bollywood (Hindi), and regional (everything that is not Hindi): dialect cinema. Movies are being made across the country in tongues like Bhili, Kunchi Kurve, Khortha, Tulu, Awadhi, Sadri, Rajasthani, Badaga,Chhattisgarhi, Bundelkhandi and Uttarakhandi. These movies are at the other end of the 100-crore Bollywood spectrum—produced in ones and twos on modest- to -negligible budgets and squeezed into the margins of the annual release calendar, they represent a sub-regional cinema that seeks to represent not just a linguistic but also a geographical and cultural identity.

The list includes dialects and languages that don’t have their own scripts, such as Lakniwalo Chwara, a Lambadi film about the tribal community, Byari, a Byari picture about social restrictions on women, Faislo Manzoor Se, a Bhili love quadrangle involving a dacoit and Indian Administrative Service aspirant, Pakaranina, a social issue movie in Kunchi Kurve, Muthbhed, a Haryanvi political drama, and Saadu Mera Jhaadu, a Dakhini comedy aimed at speakers in Karnataka (as opposed to Andhra Pradesh’s Dakhini populace).

Many of the ancient communication systems are not on the official list of languages, while some of the filmmakers are from historically marginalized sections of society, such as Pakaranina director Vainkatesh Kunchi Kurve, whose surname derives from his scheduled caste and his unique lingo. Kunchi Kurve has no script, and, as oral evidence of the nomadic nature of its speakers, carries seeds of Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation employee.

“Nobody has made a film like this before about my community," said Kunchi Kurve, who described Pakaranina as an account of the issues being faced by his people. “I have acted in it myself, written some songs and composed the music. We have been educated in Marathi and we speak our language only at home." Kunchi Kurve’s maiden effort was made for under 1 lakh, and he has been doing the rounds of television channels in the hope that they will broadcast his trailer for free.

A passion for cinema is twinned with the preservation of culture for several sub-regional cinema missionaries.

Banoth Ramu, a Lambadi from Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh, is a Life Insurance Corp. of India agent who, along with three other friends (a building contractor, a newspaper agent and a farmer) pooled together funds to produce Lakniwalo Chwara in the tongue that is spoken by the nomadic group that lives in his state, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Rajasthan. “The movie is about how the younger and older generations regard Lambadi culture," he said. Lakniwalo Chwara was released in 12 centres in three districts in Andhra Pradesh in 2012, where it ran for four weeks. “The film didn’t do super business, but we got a lot of goodwill from the release," Bhanoth said. “My people loved it. We spent 20 lakh on the film, and while we haven’t earned it all back, we are very happy that we made a film that is a message about our tribe."

The blossoming of dialect cinema was picked up in 2009 and has been tracked since by the staff at UFO Moviez India Ltd, the digital broadcasting technology company. Mitalee Patel, senior vice-president of content at UFO Moviez, which has its headquarters in Mumbai, started noticing that the list of movies being beamed into digitised single screen theatres and multiplexes around the country was throwing up languages and dialects she had never heard of, let alone watched a movie in.

Many of these language-based cultures have a folk music base and sometimes, a television industry, but movies are rare. One of the first productions to pop up on Patel’s radar was Hosa Mungaru, made in Badaga, which is spoken largely in Udagamandalam in Tamil Nadu. (Only a handful of Badaga films have been made over the years). “We are the digital highway, the releaser," she said. “Over the last few years, we have been meeting producers, many of them in it for commercial reasons and others because they want to." Hosa Mungaru’s producer, M.K. Sivaji Raja, ran his film in a theatre he had booked for 50 days. “It’s great to see these small-town guys come up," Patel said.

While several filmmakers are first-timers, others are experienced hands who want to harness the language of cinema to promote their native language. Mohamed Usman Aejaz, a veteran distributor from Bangalore, made Saadu Mera Jhaadu in the Dakhini spoken in his hometown in 2011. The comedy, about two brothers-in-law, was initially meant to go direct to DVD until Aejaz walked into a local UFO Moviez centre located opposite his office in Bangalore. “They gave us technical assistance and told us how we could release our film in cinemas," Aejaz said. “The film ran for two weeks in Bangalore and it has done very well on DVD. I spent 15 lakhs on it and I made my money back. I didn’t make it just for profit—I have the satisfaction of knowing that I made a film in my native tongue."

Since UFO Moviez’s clients are spread across India, the company has made inroads into the smaller cities and towns that lie beyond the metropolises. Perhaps this is why UFO Moviez, despite not being a distributor, has assumed the dual role of consultant and quality improvement agent for the makers of these films, Patel speculated. “We meet many producers from small towns, take them through digital technology, give them technical knowledge if they don’t have it," she said. “We have to be careful that the UFO delivery system must not be seen as bad if the film is of poor quality, so we put the producers through the entire process of digitization."

The recent revival of movies in Bhojpuri, Punjabi and Assamese, aided in large part by digitization that helps brings down the costs of distribution and exhibition, has given hope to cinemas that exist beyond the country’s major film producing centres. The Bhojpuri and Punjabi industries are especially well-established enough to attract healthy budgets, Bollywood-style pre-release promotions, and their own galaxy of stars. Films are also being made sporadically in Assamese, Sindhi and Rajasthani, but they face tremendous challenges. A movie made in a dialect that caters to the likes, tastes and cultural practices of a particular section of the population might, on paper, be the perfect antidote to the all-India movie that speaks to everybody and nobody in particular. Yet, dialect filmmakers face greater obstacles than producers of small-budget productions. They don’t get the cinemas or the shows they want, have almost no money for publicity, and are often edged out by the latest blockbuster that staggers into town.

There is a demand for a hyper-local cinema that needs to be tapped judiciously, said Ajay Sharma, a documentary filmmaker in Delhi who produced the Bhili film Faislo Manzoor Se last year. He decided to make the movie after frequent visits to Indore convinced him of the abundance of local talent that was waiting to be harnessed. Faislo Manzoor Se was supposed to be made on the cheap with a small crew, but it ballooned into a 40 lakh-plus project. Sharma used his Film and Television Institute of India contacts—he is a 1977 batch cinematography graduate from the college—to improve production values. He tried to open the film in 60 theatres in places where Bhili is prevalent, including Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan, but a spat with an Indore distributor resulted in a week-long run across only 20 theatres. However, Sharma is satisfied with the experience. “The one week that we got, the shows went house-full and there was a demand for the second week, but the theatres were booked by Himmatwala (the Sajid Khan movie) that came the following week," Sharma claimed. “There is money to be made in these parts, and financiers are after us to produce films. I remember that two cinemas in Ratlam and Mhow pulled off the film they were showing to screen ours. This film is speaking to the Bhils in their language, not in Hindi or whatever they are forced to communicate in, which they don’t speak at home with their children."

No safe predictions can be made on the staying power of dialect and sub-regional films. The business made from movies in Rajasthani, for instance, isn’t encouraging enough to suggest that a preference for the local tongue will replace Hindi in the foreseeable future. Some of the films try to include well-known faces in the cast. The Tulu movie Sompa, made in 2012, has noted Marathi and Hindi actor Sadashiv Amrapurkar, while a few low-budget Hindi films starring the likes of Ashmit Patel, Sara Khan and Ayesha Jhulka have been dubbed into Rajasthani. The 2011 Haryanvi movie Muthbhed starred Hindi actor Mukesh Tiwari, and was co-produced by Bollywood producer Kumar Mangat. Sant Sevalal, a Banjara biopic about the eponymous saint that was released last year, featured well-known Marathi actors and singers like Anuradha Paudwal, Anup Jalota and Sudesh Bhonsle on the soundtrack.

However, many releases are in single digits, and it isn’t unusual for a feat—the first film ever in Bhili! A proud moment for Awadhi!—to be rarely repeated. “These guys are a drop in the ocean for us, but they are still at it," Patel said. Several of these films have a long shelf life, she added, and have the potential to keep circulating wherever there are migrant audiences for them. The films are shot through with the descriptor “small" in every which way, but there is little doubt over the bigness of their makers’ dreams—to produce movies in the language inside their heads and on their tongues. “I remember asking a former colleague who was making a Rajasthani film as to why he was doing it, and he replied, I have lost my mind, there can’t be any other reason," Patel said. “In their own small corner of the world, these guys are so excited about their own small films. My hope is that the quality will eventually improve, and there will be more success stories."

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Published: 17 Apr 2014, 12:25 AM IST
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