While inaugurating the 10th biennial Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films here Sunday...Any takers?
The minister was quick to react to the angst expressed by Jahnu Barua, president of the Indian Documentary Producers' Association (IDPA), that Indian documentary and short movie producers do not find outlets to exhibit their productions.
He also said that if someone came to him with the proposal of setting up a channel exclusively devoted to documentaries and short movies, like the National Geographic, he would clear it within a week. (emphasis mine)
While corporate houses are going to serve us to death with news and general entertainment channels, there is no sign of a documentary channel offering. The commercial viability of a documentary channel, for sure, poses relatively higher execution challenges wrt producing engaging content. But then, don't we have people out there who love challenges? ...who have a longer-term vision? ...who own the responsibility to contribute to quality television content?
3 comments:
One of the problems with documentaries is that it lacks that mass appeal...It says directly what it wants to say...that makes it boring(for majority of the people)...
It need to be said indirectly and in a simple way...In my perception success or failure of a documentary lies in the art of conveying good thoughts without even
mentioning the name of the thought directly.....
One of the other reason for its failure is it demands more effort from the user to understand the stuff...and then apply it to his regular life....
And currently people who do documentaries....they are currently targeting mostly niche area(animals,violence...etc)...which most of the people won't watch....
as many people have their own personal headaches to deal with in their day to day life...
It should try to encapsulate the complicated set of facts provide the simple easily graspable interface which people can really understand and should match with
real life situations...These documentaries should educate them by clubbing them with most easily graspable way...."entertainment"....which is nothing but story telling...
If we can analyze the recent movies which are successful..why they are able to generate that mass appeal ..plots are pretty simple will revolve around the love towards
many of the below combinations...which is easily graspable...by most people...
person to father,person to friend,person to girl friend,person to mother,person to nation,person to profession(It is still being explored in india)
We need some good story writers who can club these to different things....education and entertainment.....
If you can see the success of Lagey Raho Munnabhai(I think raj kumar hirani did a great job).....which conveyed that how significant the contribution of gandhi was....
Till then people knew him as only the guy who provided us the freedom....but they didn't know that he found a solution to a problem at the most fundamental level....which tortured the human race for thousands of years....
"If two good people are fighting for something good and each one has a perception the other one is bad.....Gandhi found a win win solution for both of them....
In his terms victory is not defined by one who makes the other guy forcibly lay down the weapons....but victory is one who lays the down weapon first on his own terms wins...
and since no good guy wants to look bad by exploiting an unarmed people for long...he will surrender and relaise....and he will let the other guy win...."
Gandhi demonstrated this thought in a biggest possible way......
For me this movie defined that...this solution can be applied at every levels in the social ladder which is nothing but "educating people of this noble thought.."
(currently which is stagnating in the school text books in the form of boring set of facts) and the funny characters(Munna aand Circuit) were the "entertainment" part......
Another example is Rang de basanti which is also on the same lines...which conveys that it doesn't need super humans to bring a change in the system....
which was also appreciated well...
Documentaries should be made at the regional level are more appealing....because of the problems of our cultural diversity.....
It should communicate successful development stories in the society which are successful in the other parts of the country or world...
by carving out the story around it....So that sub conciously they should know what is the right thing to do....
One of the the current problems in our agrarian society of india is...that there are around 700 million people who live in villages around the poverty border line.....
But the reach of microfinance is limited.....People don't the importance of it..that it will solve their problem to a large extent...Micro finance is a success story of Bangladesh..
Mohammed Yunus(Grammen Bank)...
If it can be communicated the way Lagey Raho Munnabhai did ..
I think that will bring radical change and break the vicious circle of rural india......
->low income--
->low savings--
->inadequate social welfare net--
->low productivity--
->low income--
Even though there are wesbites like http://www.synclinefilmstore.com/art-/-culture/cat_2.html , it is not affordable by general public..
I dont know where to get award winning Documentaries and movies from other regional languages !
Raji
OMG! Given the time & thought put into the comments, I should make time to (re)search more and address the topic in more detail!
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