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Pouring Talent India Today |
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During the making of Salaam Bombay!, Mira Nair with her penchant for creating nicknames as a terms of endearment, dubbed her co-workers and close friends as the International Bhenji Brigade. “It had nothing to do with being a women’s only syndrome. I gave the nickname to my entire team of pals, men and women. Yet it is a term that embodies the spirit – sassy, audacious and commercial – of my films,” says Nair. Almost two decades later, this coinage has become synonymous with her first-time venture into film production. To be launched formally in April, the production company, International Bhenji Brigade, will be a co-production between Nair’s Mirabai Films and Bala Entertainment International Pvt Ltd. While Nair will provide the creative talent, her partners have put up the initial corpus $10 million to fund the venture. “The revenues generated by the films will be shared by the two partners,” she says, adding, “I am into this venture to become a fat cat.” The company seeks to create independent Asian cinema for the global marketplace. Inspired by Nair’s cinematic style, the company will produce three films over the next three years. Production on the first film will start by December this year, and the other two will follow in 2005. The movies will be directed by South Asians – regardless of age and gender but with a unique message to communicate. To Nair, who is this year’s film mentor in the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, the objective is to provide a global platform to bright directors – “there is abundant talent in India” - from Asia. She wants to leverage her global resources to their advantage. “I stand by my endeavor to make interesting cinema. Not only should the subject be interesting, but we should be pushing the cinematic form. I want to bring all this to International Bhenji Brigade. The idea is to discover new South Asian talent. These films could be made anywhere and the subject could be in the US, India or belong to this diaspora.” says Nair, who is at present putting the final touches to her mega project: Vanity Fair. Mentoring has almost become a way of life for Nair. In East Africa, she has come up with the idea of a film laboratory. To be launched next year, the project involves bringing together 12 young film makers – four of them South Asian-with established mentors to learn script writing and direction. But this will be the first time she won’t be in the director’s seat. Actually almost, considering she has just completed her first production, Still The Children Are Here, on the Garos people of Meghalaya made by Dinaz Stafford – a long time friend of Nair’s and among the founding members of the company. What Nair hopes to do is to take to India the production model that she developed for Monsoon Wedding – shooting in 30 days with a crew of 68 people and a budget of $1.2 million. But she has no desire to create Mira clones – “They must be independent voices,” she says. At the same time Nair is clear that there will be no set-up in making the film a commercial success. In her inimitable style she says: “You must get bums on seats. The film has to be seen by people”.
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