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New Delhi : Noted filmmaker Kumar Shahani feels that global financing of movies is a stumbling block for offbeat Indians filmmakers "who try to find their own voice and idioms in their films, removed from the celluloid mainstream".
The 70-year-old director of parallel cinema, who is working on two new projects, is looking for international finance for his movies. "Global finance standardises everything - from the way directors should take a shot to the kind of movies they should make. The corporate decisions taken to finance movies are based on international financial trends. Sometimes the judgements the financiers make are delayed and affect filmmakers like me whose originality lies in being in touch with the pulse of life," Shahani told the media in an interview.
Movies cannot be standardised, he said. "Eighty per cent of our mainstream movies flop because of the corporatisation of the movie industry. The filmmakers are usually dependent on the corporate understanding of the past and present."
"I am working with the Italian danseuse Ileana Citaristi, who came to India in 1979 and discovered her femininity through dance. She learnt Chhau in Orissa and then moved to Odissi. It is different from the movie 'Bhavantarana' ('Immanence'), I made with Odissi maestro Kelucharan Mohapatra in 1991-92," Shahani said. Shahani's new project picks up the Odissi trail from where he left it in the 1990s. He is also working on a project with British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor. But both projects are dependent on global finance.
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