Mumbai will soon get a cinema space dedicated to good cinema movement where Rs. 100-crore star opuses will not be allowed to disrupt screenings of small, independent films.
In a unique collaboration between the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), a new film centre titled “FilmBay” is set to be launched by the year-end in suburban Bandra which will provide dedicated exhibition space for alternative, independent art house cinema, as well as documentaries and children films.
Film-maker Kiran Rao has been named as the Creative Director of FilmBay, and will be supported by film critic Anupama Chopra, film-makers Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee, and Rohan Sippy.
This is not the first time that a Mumbai will get a dedicated alternative cinema space. In the 1980s, when art house film-makers were caught between the commercial pressure, and the invasion of VCR-fuelled video home viewing rage, All India Radio’s Akashwani theatre in South Mumbai had become a haven for good cinema which gave much-needed space to Amol Palekar and Hrikesh Mukherjee’s middle-of-the road comedies.
FilmBay will be set up at an existing theatre at Sherly Rajan Village in Bandra which the municipal corporation had built years ago as an exclusive cinema hall for children’s films, but the project never took off. Now, NFDC will revamp the theatre and equip it with an exhibition hall, a 100-seater digital cinema, a reading and research library, a book shop and a cafeteria.
The municipal corporation has leased the theatre to NFDC for a period of 30 years from January to nurture educational and promotional activities pertaining to cinema. Special screenings for children from municipal schools to inculcate good cinema values would also be held at this centre.
Film-maker Kiran Rao, who has also taken over as the chairperson of the financially-troubled Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) international film festival recently, said FilmBay is a dream come true for her. “Mumbai, with its 100-year history of film, deserves a space for the encouragement and celebration of cinema, and we hope to further the conversation around cinema both for the film professional and the film enthusiast,” she said in a statement. Nina Lath Gupta, Managing Director, who has helped turn around the fortunes of NFDC, said FilmBay is a brainchild of Rao, and a natural corollary to NFDC’s goals to facilitate the growth of good cinema.
Municipal Commissioner Sitaram Kunte said he was certain that that the venue would soon become an iconic cultural landmark in Mumbai.
Film-maker Rohan Sippy said multiplexes are commercial entities and serve Bollywood’s commercial cinema, and independent cinema needs its own dedicated space. “It’s important to have a venue where you can showcase and watch alternative and independent cinema. It will provide young filmmakers a fantastic platform to exhibit their films and interact with the audience directly. And if a film is liked here then it opens many more venues for the film to be screened worldwide.”
