How should cinema be in a democracy? Democratic, what else? From the making to edits and release, P.P. Sudevan follows this principle properly. The movie-maker’s films bear testimony to this. All his four shorts and maiden full-length film were crowd funded. Sans star banner, glitz and glamour or full-throated trumpeting, his film, Cr.No: 89 took an offbeat route and walked away with the Kerala State Film Award for best movie in 2013 besides bagging many more laurels. Sudevan is readying for his next, a portmanteau film most likely to be out next year.
The absence of cash flow has not affected Sudevan’s energy level. As he gears up for the next project, the director is back to his usual path of crowd-sourcing to achieve the target. An anthology of five short films, the entire work is estimated to be wrapped up at a cost of Rs 16 lakh.
“The search for funding is among people who know the cinema I make, those who have watched it and support the genre. The estimate can vary – the whole expense may come under '15 lakh or exceed the sum slightly. The film will be of three hours duration,” says Sudevan.
Sudevan’s love for his birth place, Peringode in Palakkad is discernible, therefore he has no second thoughts on what the milieu of the film should be. It is yet another chance to indulge in a three-hour ride through the pristine countryside.
There has been a void of three years between Cr.No. 89 and the upcoming anthology film. Sudevan and his Pace Trust Productions were in the meantime promoting viewership of the kind of movies of his taste across Kerala. Since the stupendous success of Cr.No. 89, he has been travelling extensively — taking seminars, workshops and organising screening of the movies as well.
“What we do is to send DVD copies of the movies to A grade libraries in the state’s various taluks to propagate the movie watching habit and take copyright to the next level. There are as many as 1,800 such libraries and we send that many copies free of cost for people to watch,” he explains.
Sudevan made his first short film Varoo in 2004 followed by Planning and Randu in 2006 and 2008. Before Cr.No: 89, he made one more, Thattumpurathappan, in 2013, a satirical one.
One of the five films has already been filmed and the preparations are on for the second.
