Short films are usually considered as the first step for aspiring filmmakers into the world of cinema — but now, their appeal is being recognised at the other end of the spectrum too!
It was Karthik Subbaraj, the brain behind award-winning films like Pizza and Jigarthanda, who started a first-of-its-kind experimental initiative Bench Talkies to promote shorts. Aishwarya Dhanush then commenced a YouTube channel dedicated to the same, called Ten Entertainment and even ran a contest. Actress Shruti Haasan also launched her own production house Isidro that focuses on shorts, digital films, musical and multimedia-based modern content.
Now the latest celeb to endorse this trend, is Rayane, daughter of Radhikaa Sarathkumar, who along with her mom’s production house Radaan Media, is conducting a short film festival contest to encourage young talent.
Rayane, who has stepped into film production under her home banner, says, “Radaan is known for good content, but we wanted to diversify. I know a lot of people have the potential, but didn’t have a platform to showcase their talent. It is a challenging task to narrate a script in just 15 or 30-minutes! Everyone needs a push, that could change their entire career — we are just providing one such opportunity to short filmmakers.”
She elaborates that the Radaan Short Film Festival will be an annual affair, and initially 25 short films would be chosen from all entries — to be uploaded on their YouTube channel, “Depending on how well they are received, we shortlist 10 — after which the five best are selected by a panel comprising director Balaji Mohan, cinematographer Rathnavelu, Karthik Subbaraj, editor Antony and Santhosh Narayanan. Industry experts then interact with the selected few during a workshop, and the top three receive cash prizes as well as individual awards in various category like editing, music etc. Radaan will help the finalists produce a short film.”
Karthik Subbaraj got his first break in the industry, when his short Kaatchipizhai was selected for Naalaya Iyakunar, a TV show for aspiring filmmakers. In an effort to bring short films to theatres, he created a distribution hub Bench Flix and managed a theatrical release for his first set of six films — Bench Talkies which featured Vijay Sethupathi in one of them. Karthik says, “I have been trying to get theatre releases for short films ever since I have been making them. I didn’t get any response from theatres initially. Then I saw films like Kerala Cafe, 5 Sundarikal and Bombay Talkies (all anthologies of short films) and thought if they could do it, why not us? That was how Bench Talkies came about.”
Aishwarya Dhanush also says that she started off as a short filmmaker only. “Though none of my shorts have been screened, it served as a practice session and helped me learn the nuances of filmmaking”, she says and adds, “I have seen many talented youngsters struggling to reach to the masses and not getting their due. So, I feel this will be a platform to promote their content online. Since we have tagged it along with our social network pages and our production banner which has wide reach, I am confident that the deserving ones would get a necessary break.” In addition to multi-lingual short-feature-based content, Shruti Haasan intends to release her music content as well as the work of independent, young pan-Indian artists under the Isidro label.
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