by Sandhya Ramachandran
[box]Tele-films are something that need to be revived, feels Sandhya Ramachandran, especially at a time when saas-bahu serials and a dozen reality shows are dominating the small screen. Read on to find out about her earliest memories of tele-films, the immense potential they hold and much more.[/box]There was a time when I was around 10 or 12 when television meant Doordarshan and there were these wonderful things called tele-films that existed.
Just an hour, and a story was told, and it was never boring. There were no item numbers that had to be plugged in to keep us glued. Masalas stuck to their kitchen boxes and formulae to our chemistry books. The films took us on a content- rich journey.
A tele-film (or TV film, television movie, TV movie, television film, telemovie, made-for-television film, movie of the week (MOTW or MOW), feature-length drama, single drama, and original movie, as Wikipedia informs) is a film made for our idiot box, unlike its cousins, which are made solely for distribution across “theatres worldwide” as they famously claim.
I vividly remember a particular slot called “Director’s Cut” on the long dead DD-2/ DD Metro, on weekends, between 9 pm and 10 pm, when tele-films made by famous directors were shown. I don’t recollect missing a single show. In fact I even remember that a couple of them had songs! And those songs are stuck in my head till date owing to my very impressionable age at that time!
In a world that swears by its bread pakode (thanks Band Baaja Baaraat) instead of fighting for a sadhya meal, one feels that it is time to enter into the biggest reality show of them all – the search for tele-films! One search in YouTube or Vimeo shows that short films are being made dime a dozen. When movie-making has been made cheap and film studies are not taboo anymore even in the most conservative of houses, the future of the film industry lies in tapping these content-driven well-executed passionate pieces of work.
Television soaps are forever chasing saas-es and bahu-s (who are mostly chasing one another) or falling for the endless reality shows. Channel X declares Singer A as the “Best Singer in the whole nation”, and Channel Y, the very next day has Singer B being declared something similar. It is quite a pity that we have nothing else but these contradictory shows to occupy our prime time.
What television must do is rope in directors –veterans, student filmmakers and enthusiasts – to develop myriad content to fill the best four hours of our evening with tele features and short films. Our own demi-gods should also understand that no matter which IMAX their films screen at, it is the little corner telly that still captivates the largest audience in a developing nation like India. And every actor worth his emotional palette would only want to be a part of this franchise.
A whole market could be made out of tele-films. Producers needn’t wake up in nightmares after having invested in crores for a ‘masala entertainer’. Tele-films will mostly turn out a lot cheaper to make (excluding a few exceptional themes that inherently demand their extra paisa). The reach and advertising market is such that the returns would be splendid too. And at the end of the day, the financial guru could surely come up with wackier ways in drawing out more money from this enterprise!
Short films, which, unlike their feature friends, are less than 40 minutes long and could even be just a few seconds long, could also be arrayed into a programme that will last 30 minutes (inclusive of those never-ending ads). One cannot think of a more refreshing type of programming in this regard! Stories, perspectives, slices-of-life delivered in seconds and minutes lending a new angle to your own thoughts.
The best part is these tele-features and shorts could be fictional, documentary or experimental in nature. Imagine the kind of themes they could explore, the nature of the exposure they would provide to our general public! Socially relevant campaigns could have better reach, new talented actors could be launched, unexplored places could be seen from your favourite armchair.
The far-reaching consequences of this idea are many. It is a pity that television channels have not thought of the marriage of the smaller and larger screen content-wise!
Buy your home-made popcorn, or go for the hot bajjis, if you please, and settle down cosily in front of the TV to see a film unfold. What better delight can a cineaste expect? If affording this becomes a big issue for television channels (which I highly doubt, well knowing how much money they freely spend in creating ‘family serials’ from the perspectives of maternal cousin twice-removed, grandfather’s brother’s wife’s daughter-in-law and the like), they could slot this as a weekly affair. But oh, what an affair to remember and relish it would be!
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