A new wave in K'town

Anyone in Tamil Nadu who looks for alternative cinema beyond Kollywood would have come across Tamizh Studios and its co-founder Arun. What started as a short film has now turned into a cinema movement in Tamil. Film workshops, interaction sessions with leading Tamil filmmakers, film clubs, and an exclusive shop and library for books related to Tamil cinema are only the tip of the iceberg of what Tamizh Studios does.

In an interaction with DC, ‘Tamizh Studios Arun’, as he is known now, shares details of his journey, his dissatisfaction with mainstream cinema, and his aim to bring a paradigm shift to it.

“I used to spend a lot of time in the libraries of British Council, American Centre, and Russian Embassy during my college days, and that gave me the opportunity to pursue a film course in London. But when I returned, I had to take up a job because of my family’s situation,” he starts.

However, the film enthusiast in Arun never let him move on with the job. Along with his friend Guna, he planned to make a short film, and that’s when reality hit him. “It was in 2008. Technicians who I wanted to work with asked me  for about Rs 75,000 to make a short film. Then I realised how impenetrable the industry was. I was worried about all the innocent, aspiring filmmakers who are being swindled,” he says.

This made the duo start a website called Tamizh Studios, which now has turned into a movement, and many leading filmmakers including Mysskin, Karthik Subbaraj, and Pa Ranjith have been part of the various classes and activities of Tamizh Studios.

When asked why he started a movement instead of making a film, Arun says, “The problem here is lack of film appreciation among the audience. Good directors are of no use when there is no one to enjoy their art. So, I first wanted to cultivate that sensibility here. I want to create the audience for my films.”

Padimai is another wing of Tamizh Studios, which aims to develop a taste for good cinema among the audience. Volunteers go to many villages, screen short films, and discuss them. They also train talented individuals from those places in cinema.

He also stacks up many other reasons for the need of such movements here — “Our mainstream cinema is like an extension of stage drama because it evolved from that art. Even now, the grammar of cinema is ruthlessly broken here. We need to fix it. More than that, psychologically speaking, our cinema has encouraged hero-worship. It professes that someone, will come someday, and redeem everything. What it has forgotten to say is that heroes are one of us. And violence! Our films justify violence. When a villain does it, it’s a murder — but if it is a hero, it is retribution.”

When queried what he considers the biggest achievement of the movement, he says, “It is safe to say that Tamizh Studios has played an important role in the success of many quality Tamil films. It might sound like an exaggeration but I am sure it is a fact.”