Movie aficionados in the city have something to cheer now. A film society, founded six years ago in the heart of Mumbai, has announced its fourth edition of their Nayaa Film Festival - with the exception that this time around, the entire festival takes place online, a first-of-its-kind in India so far.
“Every year that we held the festival in Mumbai, we’ve had inquiries from across the country about the festival in their respective cities. That is when we decided that it would be so much better to take the festival online where everyone can have access,” says Pranav Ashar, founder, Enlighten Film Society, which is behind the initiative.
To facilitate this online film festival, Pranav and his team launched a brand new video streaming platform - Cineoo - in January and over the last two months, they have released four movies for free download and streaming on the platform, and have gained more than 20,000 registered users on the website with people downloading over 60 TB of content from the same. The movies were Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus, Amit Dutta’s Sonchidi, Ashim Ahluwalia’s John and Jane as well as an online video experiment created by Chris Milk and Beck that won the Webby award for ‘Best Use of Video or Moving Image’. “These directors have been close friends and agreed to let us put up the movie for free, legal downloads. We’ve been discussing this issue for a while. We need to create spaces where the entire film loving community can congregate irrespective of physical spaces and distance. Great films don’t just get made in Mumbai. If films from all over the country were available to people everywhere, only then does the industry grow,” explains Pranav.
The 4th Nayaa Cinema Festival, which begins on March 10th and continues till April 15th on Cineoo.com, will showcase 100 acclaimed classics and introduce a few films from world cinema. Over a period of 46 days, festival ticket holders will be allowed to download and stream all the films playing at the festival. In addition to this, the festival will keep adding new films to the collection over the course of the year, which festival ticket holders can again watch for free.
Although Pranav expects about 3000 people to register for the festival, which costs Rs 1000 per ticket, there’s hope that more people will make use of this opportunity to watch more than hundred films over the course of a year, entirely in the comfort of their own houses. “We’re going to be showcasing films that have shaped the film industry. 100 world cinema classics will all be black & white films. Our aim is to take the audience through landmark moments of world cinema. We’ll also have a segment called Hues of Cinema which will feature non black & white films, but those that have equally made an impact in recent times,” explains Pranav.
Festival ticket holders will also have access to heavily researched text material for reading as well as download various other media that will give viewers a more holistic cinematic experience. Registrations for the festival will begin officially on March 10th on their website Cineoo.com.
