City youngsters’ crowdfunding attempt to screen Oscar winner film The Salesman fails

There was a time in Nagpur when cinema halls would screen Hollywood classics and world movies, including Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) and François Truffaut’s cult French films. In fact, these movies attracted a sizable audience in the city. But today, the scenario seems to have drastically changed. With growing taste for commercial films among the cinegoers, the number of takers for world cinema seems to be declining in the city.Validating this is a recent example wherein young cinema buffs tried to crowdfund Academy Award winning Iranian film The Salesman, but failed miserably due to lack of supporters.
Not many takers
One of the organisers Sukhada Chaudhary who is very disheartened by the failure says, “We wanted to set up a theatrical screening of The Salesman in a city multiplex using crowdfunding, but only 18 people have bought the tickets and we were short of 43 more. We did create a buzz on social media, but it didn’t help us get desired number of audience. So, all our efforts to bring in quality cinema here are wasted.”
Commercial cinema responsible
While big budget commercial flicks draw huge crowds in the multiplexes every Friday, meaningful foreign films are hardly screened. Citing this as one of the reasons, Sukhada adds, “This unsuccessful attempt has made me realise that major chunk of movie audience in the city is driven towards the commercial cinema and number of people inclined towards unconventional foreign films is very less.”
Fighting a ghetto mindset
On one hand, city intellectuals rue over less foreign films being screened here, but when attempts are made to bring in something new, people show no support, laments Dheera Chitale who is an ardent fan of world cinema. She adds, “Cinema buffs from Mumbai or Pune voluntarily join in to support such cause, but here in Nagpur it is hard to convince people to break free from their taste in cinema. What is even more disappointing is that even the young audience refrain from experimenting. But we are keeping our fingers crossed and have not given up on this endeavour of bringing world cinema, home.”