HYDERABAD: Entrepreneurship and risk-taking come effortlessly to me. Thanks to those traits, today my production Maadathy got a world premiere at Busan Film Festival, South Korea in October and is now gearing up for the 25th Kolkata International Festival (November 8-15). The movie got selected alongside other landmark movies such as Jallikattu, Bombay Rose, and Aadhar at Busan,” says Telugu girl Bhavana Goparaju. She co-produced Maadathy along with Singapore-based production house Golden Ratio Films. Bhavana currently runs her own startup called Dreamladdr, which she calls as ‘a work in progress, an EdTech startup with a touch of mentorship in Hyderabad.
“I’m also producing an English feature film with a Canadian co-producer,” says Bhavana who currently lives in Rochester and hopes to be back in Hyderabad and then to her hometown Warangal soon. “Maadathy is my third film. My first was as an associate producer for Mantra in Hindi which released in theatres and online platforms such as Netflix, and Hotstar.
I turned a producer for my second one, a Bengali short film (with a Russian collaboration). It won five awards all over the world and got a film fest screening in every continent. My third is Maadathy, a Tamil film for which I am a co-producer. I produce movies in any language that catches my fancy. I put my money on human stories I believe in.”
Bhavana is a regular 20-plus Telangana girl who went to the US to study her Masters and who pursued her passion for movies and has bravely ventured into movie production. To what extent has she invested in movies? What are the risks and returns? “As a producer, I either invest ourselves or find someone who can invest along with me or on my behalf. As a producer who develops stories, we retain the major share of the movie to hold the intellectual property and not to sidetrack the vision that I have for the movie.”
She adds “I feel I have gotten little more than what I have invested in terms of both money and experience. The movies that I associate with are independent movies and they work quite differently from commercial movies. In movies, when you invest you mostly calculate how much risk you are sharing than ROI. Mostly you believe in the story and where does this kind of a story go – is it for the digital audience or multiplex crowd? Recently, I felt I had over-allocated for a movie, but then usually, we can make up in the next.”
She says that screening movies at film festivals is similar to artists taking part in talent shows which gives them free publicity. “Film festivals bring together the entire movie ecosystem – directors, distributors, critics, students, and audience. So, when you get a selection and screening a movie, you know you reached your audience and everyone related to film without extra marketing. Considering most prestigious ones don’t have a registration fee, good movies actually can milch the opportunity. Learning from film making: ‘Be patient. Plan. Change. Unlearn.’”
What Maadathy - the unfairy tale is about?
Puthirai Vannaar is a Dalit girl who lives in southern Tamil Nadu. She has been forced to wash clothes of other Dalits, the dead and the menstruating women. The sight of Puthirai Vannaars, as per caste norms, could pollute the so-called upper caste groups. Puthirvannars were forced to live in shrubs so they could remain unseeable to others. Maadathy is their deity. This film is a tale about a young girl who grows up in the caste and how she came to be immortalised as their local deity, Maadathy. The film is an attempt to introspect what is it like being an unseeable slave woman, living the lowest among the lowest, as a victim to both patriarchy and caste system.