Late Call

A still from John and Jane.

It was “probably too modern when it first came out in 2005”, says filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia about his debut feature film John and Jane, a mix of documentary and science fiction. With the independent film scene in India yet to take off, the film hardly got an audience then, even though it did the festival rounds and received critical acclaim. It has been selected for the Melbourne International Film Festival this year, to be screened under ‘India in flux Living Resistance’ —  a section that honours one of the best examples of truly independent filmmaking. John and Jane will also be available online for view in India on cineoo.com from August 15, onwards. Cineoo is a new initiative that allows downloading and streaming of curated film content. “The film meets the people on the other side of the telemarketing boom: India’s industrious call centre operators to discover a new generation of Indians that live between the real and the virtual,” says Ahluwalia, who directed Miss Lovely. According to him, John and Jane defines the kind of filmmaking he loves. “It makes me happy that a whole new generation of viewers will finally see it,” he says.