VanajaTheFilm.com

Hi, I am a 25 year old mechanical engineer from Delhi. I met Naveen Challa at the Habitat Film Festival in New Delhi. We had a small conversation regarding my unique options. I have got admission to the MFA program at the graduate film school at the New York University with full scholarship this year; and to IIM for an MBA. Movies interest me, and I would like to make one someday.

I do not write to you to ask for guidance/ counseling, but to share my particular case with you. On Naveen's behest, your comments in this forum might also be of interest/ help to similarly ambitious people.

Will wait for a response,

Dear Siddharth,

First of all congratulations. Getting a Full Scholarship at NYU isn't easy, neither is getting into an MBA Program at an IIM. Both are excellent programs.

As per your request, I will not counsel you, but lay a few thoughts at your disposal.

If Bollywood is your choice, I am ill prepared to answer, since I know very little of the Industry.

But if you love the Arthouse genre, and want to make your life as an Independent Filmmaker, then let's get the Bad Part out first:

Abroad, the industry is small, fiercely competitive, and prone to disappointment. Awards are never a guarantee, since Juries are so varied by nature, and you're up against the best of the best, the world over. There are only 4 Major Festivals: Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Venice, and of these, only 3 are competitive (Cannes, Berlin and Venice). You have no choice but to get into one of them, since most Arthouse Distributors look for their stamp. Festivals and Juries favor Issue oriented films. But the trouble there is that the films that are most likely to get picked up for distribution are: Thrillers, Comedies, Horror-Flicks etc. since they are where the audience exists. Distributors always favor films with Stars, and as you can imagine, those elusive creatures are well beyond the reach of most Independent Filmmakers. Many filmmakers that I know of therefore hold down a second Job - such as in Advertising, to make ends meet.

The industry in India, on the other hand, has yet to look favorably on Arthouse, and it may take years or even decades for that to happen - your guess is as good as mine. For most films to recover costs, they need to be released and do financially well in their home country - and this is probably the single biggest reason why most Indian Arthouse Filmmakers do not/ cannot make a second movie.

What I am about to say is embarrassing, so forgive me for putting it this way, but it is the clearest way I can warn you :-

VANAJA won the Best Debut at Berlin - the World's largest film festival. It has picked up 24 International Awards, and 2 Spirit Nominations and been Selected into 112 Film Festivals the World Over. It's screenplay was placed in the Permanent Archives at the Margaret Herrick Library (the Library of the MPAA - the organization that Awards the Oscars). Roger Ebert, America's leading Film Critic placed it in the top 5 Foreign Films of 2007, and The New York Times called it "Absolutely Timeless"........ yet this film remains unreleased and unknown in India and Repeated Requests to Indian Distributors have fallen on Deaf Ears.

But enough on the dark side. Let's look at the Bright Side... and perhaps a few words of my personal experience might be in order.

Film, to me, is magic: On Screen. In my Mind. In my Heart.
The simple pride in watching Mamatha perform what she calls "Scene 66" - where she begs the landlady to return....
or the joy of seeing a viewfinder filled with waterlily leaves...
or the frustration of being awoken in the middle of the night for a cup of "morning" coffee...
or the value of a million small things, each of which appears more precious than any other...
each in turn, sums to the total that is Film.

I can imagine that I have placed on the scales, on one hand, a bucket full of very good reasons why you should not be a filmmaker, and on the other side, just a tiny bead of why you should.

But whether or not that tiny bead is the purpose of your life... that is a decision only you can make.

Regards,
Rajnesh Domalpalli

hi. thank you for all your inputs.

i don't really know why i want to make films. is it about making a point, or expressing my thoughts, or telling something? i don't think these are my motivations. more than i contributing to the medium, the medium has so far shaped up how i see the world. so unless i play with pictures and sounds and thoughts together, i will always feel this uneasiness. i know this sounds like an indulgently expensive hobby to maintain, but at its very basic level, it is about that.

nevertheless, there is so much more i would want to do within cinema. i tend to look at it as the case of the missing scrapbooks. we have paint and we have artists. but we are a few scrapbooks short. let's "ignore" people for a while - if these artists could just have their scrapbooks, people will pour in too. maybe no artist is alike, but so isn't anyone else - and every art will find its own takers. it must be a really complex jigsaw!

i'll post my decision here sometime later to give some finality to this thread. :) in case i can be of some assistance, i will more than happy to volunteer.

-siddharth

Hi Rajnesh,

These were a few tough months, and the decision was not easy to take! :) I joined IIM Indore for MBA.

Will look forward to some association with you in future!

Regards
Siddharth Malik

What's the difference between an MBA and a four year degree in business? I noticed that the requirements for getting into UND's MBA program do not include a four-year degree in business, just a few all around business classes (like economics and math) and a GMAT score.
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