A Hindi film titled “Hume Jeena Seekh Liva’ (“We Have Learnt to Live’), a story about a teenage romance that runs into trouble because of socio-political issues, is a first of its kind co-operative film in Indian cinema, according to the Mail and Guardian.
Released in January this year, the non star-studded film with a paltry budget of 10m rupees ($260 000) – the cost of a typical Bollywood is $5m – was financed by 150 producers. This is considered as unusual by Bollywood standards, states the report.
Tickets have been sold by going door to door and profits are to be shared equally. More than 150 people from the western state of Maharashtra financed the production.
A similar financing strategy was used by South African director Tim Greene in 2002. Greene put out a call for a 1,000 investors who could each contribute R,1000 to the budget of his film “BOY CALLED TWIST’.
“Spreading the risk across a broad community of like-minded people, he was able to break the deadlock of risk-aversion that holds the South African film industry captive,’ states the movie’s website.
The movie about a Cape Town street kid, based on Charles Dicken’s classic Oliver Twist secured a million rands by August 2003. The Twisted Pictures (Ltd) production’s principal photography lasted for 21 days and was completed within budget and on time.
After screening the offline edit of the movie for South Africa’s National Film and Video Foundation in 2004, an additional one million rand was committed for the film’s completion. On November 2004, the film premiered to a standing ovation at the Cape Town World Cinema Festival.
The movie then screened at international festivals including Cannes in 2005, representing South Africa in the Tous Les Cinema de Monde (All the Cinemas of the World) section.
