by Fahim Hamid
For independent South Asian artists who struggle to find platforms for their work, one would think that the age of streaming would make it easier than ever before for all artists to find their audience and distribute their content. But, like the distribution methods for media in the past, SVOD/OTT services are capitalist ventures that prioritize profit and well-marketed products. Finding success and exposure as an independent filmmaker on these platforms is still a challenge, esp. on the dominant streaming platforms (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) which are now global in reach. However, there are many smaller streaming platforms that are emerging regionally, outside of the West, which have access to international audiences that large multinational corporate platforms may struggle to capture. These audiences may be more receptive to decolonial narratives, so it is important for South Asian artists to understand what is available in the rapidly changing streaming environment. A look at the situation for streaming and new media in India and Bangladesh offers a glimpse at what is happening and what more may be possible.
The film industry in India is a highly commercial behemoth due to Bollywood, the popular name for the traditional center of Indian filmmaking in Bombay (now Mumbai). Bollywood produces twice the number of movies that Hollywood does, annually, and in 2004 surpassed global audience viewership of U.S. films (Perry, 2007). [Current global viewership numbers could not be found, so the present-day landscape with mass streaming services, many of them U.S.-based, makes it difficult to say which country dominates.]
When it comes to documentary and non-fiction content in India, it is a highly regulated aspect of the industry. The Films Division on India (FDI), part of the government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, exercises strong control over the financing, production and distribution of documentaries. Many of the documentaries backed by FDI focuses on “cultural heritage, traditional folklore and biographical information of respectable Indians”, which can be seen as nationalistic propaganda films (Wadhwa, 2015)
“Being a government run body, the Films Division not only blocks the distribution of independent documentaries through the mere existence but holds a legal, contractual monopoly over distribution outlets. As it is, the independently produced documentaries find it extremely difficult to find distribution outlets…In reality, since the advent of film in India, any film without the monetary support by the Films Division was rendered unmarketable. The Films Division may decide to buy an independently produced documentary at its price and then choose to distribute it or it held no future theatrically.” (Wadhwa)
Certainly, in the west, we certainly have public media outlets that are funded by governments and we do have institutions that regulate media in general, but they do not dominate non-fiction media the way FDI does in India. In the west, both fiction and non-fiction media is often driven by corporate or independent producers. Only 10% of FDI’s theatrical releases are independent films (Wadhwa). If you are an independent documentary filmmaker, you will face many challenges in financing, producing and distributing your films. Many such filmmakers will raise money through donations and obtain sponsorships from NGOs or corporations.
“India’s theatrical market is notoriously tough for independent filmmakers to access. Both multiplexes and single-screen cinemas focus on mainstream Bollywood, or in the south of India, regional-language films. Many indie films also run into problems with India’s Central Board of Film Certification. And even if they manage to secure screens and a favourable release date, the costs of marketing an indie film can easily outstrip the initial budget.” (Shackleton, 2016)
“There are nearly 1,000 movies that are made in India every year, but only about 35-40 per cent actually manage to get a proper release across the nation. This is one of the major obstacles for small time independent filmmakers who work on a shoestring budget on their dream projects.” (IndianTelevision.com, 2013)
There is also FilmBazaar, India’s “largest film market”—a festival/co-production market for Indian filmmakers to collaborate with international talent. It is organized by National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC), an agency within the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Shackleton).
Despite being a government institution, FilmBazaar serves as a festival akin to Cannes or Sundance and has featured many prominent independent filmmakers—some of whom have made Third Cinema-type films—such as Bangladesh’s Mostofa Sarwar Farooki (his films include “Television” and the upcoming “No Land’s Man”) (Mostofa’s wiki page).
Beyond these traditional, established media institutions, the distribution landscape has significantly changed for independent filmmaking in the last decade with the advent of streaming. For example, the very recent investment by Netflix in original productions in India has started to create more independent films (mainly fiction/dramas) through these platforms, circumventing the traditional, limited avenues for independent production and distribution in India. As globalization transforms the world economy and multinational corporations try to capitalize foreign markets, there may be more instances of foreign companies like Netflix seeking to break into India and produce original programming within the country and catered to their audiences. As such, there may be more opportunities for independent documentary filmmakers in India to find support for their films on streaming platforms, whether foreign or domestic. As Bengali scholar Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem writes: “The growth of multinational capital throughout the world has led to the development of many new centers of media production and has changed the direction of global and regional flows of media materials (Bhuiyan, 2002).”
More from Al Kareem, a bit of history (Al Kareem, 2020, p. 4):
According to Cunningham et al. (2010), online distribution (OLD) first emerged in 1997 in North America with pioneers like I-Film, Atom Films, Intertainer, SightSound, Pop.com, CinemaNow etc., but these companies had been absorbed by larger companies as they failed to establish sustainable business models. Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, and Sony – the six major Hollywood studios had invested in Movielink and Movie beam in 2001 which were expected, they state, to be the leaders of a second wave but both websites were sold in 2006 (Cunningham et al., p. 121). Apple iTunes led a third wave by building a leading movie download business with Hulu, at the same time as Netflix, Blockbuster Amazon, and some others (Cunningham et al., 2010, p. 121).
Certainly, when it comes to Third Cinema—independent films that seek to subvert oppressive structures, whether corporate or governmental—filmmakers will probably need to look beyond Netflix. In recent years independent filmmakers have found alternatives to theatrical releases and found direct-to-consumer distribution, such as through TVOD (transactional pay-per-view, e.g. Google Play, Apple, YouTube, etc.) and SVOD (Netflix, Amazon Prime). In India, TVF InBox Office is an example of a SVOD that offers independently produced programs. One of the advantages of using streaming services is the potential to reach a wider global audience:
“While the SVoD giants can’t acquire every indie film that comes along, they are providing film-makers with a much-needed additional avenue for international distribution. When Indian broadcasters acquire local films, they expect to take worldwide ancillary rights, but then rarely exploit the films outside of India. Kumar says he would have made more money if he’d sold U-Turn to a single TV network: “But Netflix has 70 million viewers worldwide and we wanted to reach that audience.” (Shackleton)
(By contrast, there are more mainstream streaming services like Eros and Zee5 which distribute and even produce the popular, big budget Bollywood films.)
BANGLADESH – To imagine what the future of independent film distribution may look like in the region on streaming platforms, we can look at the situation in neighboring Bangladesh. Formerly a part of India until the 1947 Partition, Bangladesh gained its independence from Pakistan in 1971. Its film industry has always been a fledgling one—the country’s economy struggled for decades in the aftermath of its liberation war, which included a terrible genocide against the Bangladeshi population, and resources for creative and artistic industries were always scarce. Dhallywood is the cinema center of Bangladesh, named after the capital city Dhaka.
There have been a few unique streaming platforms that have emerged in Bangladesh. Because of streaming becoming the most common form of media consumption (a trend which had begun before the COVID pandemic), the custom of watching films or television programs at home with friends or family has either held steady or grown (before streaming it was still commonplace for households to watch programs on a television set). And the reality is that in Bangladesh, cinemas themselves have dwindled dramatically since the 90s—due to a combination of factors: “piracy, poor film quality, obscenity, and run-down condition of theatres” (Roy, 2016). Many Bangladeshis watch pirated films in tea stalls, somewhat resembling the the tradition of “video-halls” or “video-clubs” as they were called in Nigeria where people often viewed pirated content, thereby distributing to the community at a low cost, albeit illegal. These days, with password-sharing among friends and family, we have a similar phenomenon of illicit sharing and watching films/television on various OTT services which have been slowly growing in Bangladesh. These services are not significantly different from the Amazon’s and HBO Max’s of the world—many are owned my major tech and communications companies.
In Bangladesh, the VOD services which have popped up in recent years include Iflix, a Malaysian-based streaming platform that services “emerging markets” in Asia: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and launched in Bangladesh and Pakistan in 2017 (Iflix wiki page). However, Iflix closed its Bangladesh operation in 2020, due to its inability to compete with other services that were more affordable or free, such as Bioscope, a Bangladeshi-streaming platform, playing Bengali movies and TV shows (“natoks”). Both Bioscope and Iflix are owned by telecommunications or mobile phone companies. BongoBD is another Bangladeshi streaming service that also plays Bengali programs, which started out as a YouTube channel. In the future, these regional streaming services, which are often less expensive than Netflix or Amazon, can remain competitive and become attractive for independent filmmakers to distribute their work on these platforms (Al Kareem, p. 9).
But many of these platforms are still purely capitalist enterprises seeking to make profit with popular content, and so they are not necessarily dedicated to independent, subversive, de-colonial content. While streaming services have democratized film distribution in ways that buttress the principles of Third Cinema (as Fanon and various manifestos have established) and can empower an independent filmmaker, they are beholden to the same forces that controlled traditional film and television distribution of the past—potentially rendering the change moot.
The relationships between media power and state power are analyzed in the discussion of the critical political economy by identifying the owners and controllers of media and communication resources (Wasko, 2014, p. 260). In the case of film distribution, the owners and controllers of new distribution outlets, relations between the state and the distributors are examined by the critical political economy. Furthermore, media power is assessed by the discussion of class issues (Wasko, 2014, p. 263). Critical political economists ask if online film distribution is open for all or bound to a separate class. On the other hand, the critical political economy of new media should be concerned with the understanding of power structure, its evolution, and renewal (Mansell, 2004, p. 6), where understanding the domination of small capital by big capital and capturing the market by big conglomerates are discussed. The involvement of the state in the film industry, reproduction of power structure, uneven power distribution, and wealth, which are represented by the industry, are also matters of interest in the critical political economic approach (Wasko, 2004, p. 228). [Al Kareem, p.7-8]
So, ultimately, these inequities with popular SVODs may push distribution needs for independent artists into even newer territories. Another aspect of this evolving media landscape are new technologies, such as Virtual & Augmented Reality.
Parul Wadhwa, one of the cited authors earlier, is a multimedia artist (of Indian origin) that uses AR/VR to create and content and experiences geared toward social change/impact. Another example of Project Dastaan, an Indian organization which produced VR experiences that allowed refugees to virtually re-visit their pre-Partition (1947) villages in India/Pakistan (since they were unable to physically travel to them due to COVID). Meanwhile, the popular Indian streaming platform, Hotstar, began using VR technology for their content (mostly it has been for sports and live events, so there is potential for incorporating this technology for all kinds of content in the future. (Hulu has done the same and YouTube also started using 360-degree video capabilities.) [Ahir, 2019]
Parul Wadhwa’s “Let’s Get Social/VeRve”, a VR platform she founded for “affordable 360 storytelling for social causes”:
Sidestepping streaming and theatrical releases, The Great Indian Traveling Cinema (Sreenivasan, 2017) is an alternative distribution method created my filmmaker Sandeep Mohan. Frustrated with working in the commercial film industry of Mumbai, Mohan made his own films. He then decided to get his own projector and travel with his films on the road and screen his films at local cafes, pubs, art galleries and even people’s homes—any place that would host him. “Hola Venky!”, his 2014 film which was first released online on YouTube, went on the road with him for 14 months and was screened in 92 locations, including in the U.S. and Singapore. While he still plans to use Netflix and Amazon for releasing his films, he continues looking for ways to work outside the mainstream outlets for distribution. This is certainly not novel approach. Independent U.S. filmmaker Sarah Pirozek describes a similar instance:
“Also frustrated by distribution opportunities available to her in 2019, Naomi McDougall Jones went the “direct-to-fan” model and took her feature Bite Me on a three-month, 51-screening 40-city tour, piecing together screening fees from indie cinemas and lecture halls.”
This seems to perfectly espouse the guerilla-style approach that Fanon and Teshome Gabriel have described in their respective works on Third Cinema (“The Wretched of the Earth” and “Major Themes in Third Cinema”).
Another example of such freeform, unconventional methods may be the “Bring Your Own Film Festival”, which takes place on the beaches of Puri, India. As the name suggests, any artist can participate—they simply walk in, register, pay a screening fee, and get to exhibit their work at the festival. A seemingly simple yet bold idea, this festival has been running since 2004 and has drawn artists from all over the world (Joshi, 2018). The festival is not even restricted to just film, as artists of many disciplines—including music, theatre, painting, sculpture, dance, literature and photography—have showcased their work. There is no competition, juries or awards—simply a ground for everyone to share and experience each other’s work.
Perhaps one overlooked aspect of the new media landscape is social media. Increasingly, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, etc. serve as the primary distributors of original content by creators. This has certainly caused a democratization of media in many ways—with citizen journalists, for example, sharing viral media (e.g. instances of police brutality captured on phones) which can challenge oppressive systems and create social change or consciousness. In Bangladesh, one example may be the citizen journalists among Rohingya refugees. Voice of Rohingya, one of the largest Rohingya-led information services that operate inside the world’s most populous refugee camp, has a network of citizen journalists in every camp in Bangladesh (as well as in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and among the global diaspora) and these volunteers supply critical information and stories to their refugee communities.
“They are not [trained] journalists, they are just normal people like us. Whenever anything happens, they tell us,” the VoR spokesperson said. “We don’t have any means [of distribution] other than social media, but we still need to share the news to people among our community.” (Hammond, 2018). Aside from the mainstream/corporate social media outlets, there are other distribution avenues at play here:
“Jamtoli Information Line, a program supported by a Swiss non-profit organization Fondation Hirondelle, is another platform that provides information services to refugees, broadcasting their programs by loading them onto SD cards and then plugging them into portable speakers. Their teams manually take these common gathering areas, where they can be further disseminated via Bluetooth.” (Hammond)
And here is another example of a similar program: DW Akademie, a German organization, which also trains citizen journalists in the Rohingya camps:
With various streaming services emerging in the region, social media platforms, non-profit organizations, VR/AR + other innovative technologies, and guerrilla/grassroots modes of distribution, South Asia has a dynamic environment for independent media-making that exists outside of the vast commercial bubble of western India. Perhaps this new, rapidly changing landscape can disrupt the traditional business models of art and cinema and pave the way for a new kinds of stories and storytellers.
SOURCES:
Wadhwa, Parul (2015)– “Film Festivals in India | The alternative theatrical circuit”: https://culture360.asef.org/magazine/film-festivals-india-alternative-theatrical-circuit/
Perry, Mark J. (2007) – “Hollywood vs. Bollywood”: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/hollywood-vs-bollywood/#:~:text=In%20terms%20of%20the%20number,by%202.6%20billion%20viewers%20worldwide
Al Kareem, S. S. (2020) – “New Media in Film Distribution in Bangladesh: Bane or Boon?”: https://www.athensjournals.gr/media/2020-3843-AJMMC-Kareem-04.pdf
Shackleton, Liz (2016) – “Film Bazaar: India’s independents seek distribution alternatives”:
https://www.screendaily.com/features/film-bazaar-indias-independents-seek-distribution-alternatives/5111697.article
IndianTelevision.com Team (2013) – “Alternative Distribution Plans for Indie Films (India)”: https://www.indiantelevision.com/aac/y2k13/aac556.php
Pirozek, Sarah (2020) – “Searching for an Independent Distribution Strategy Amidst Pandemics and Streaming Wars”: https://filmmakermagazine.com/109861-searching-for-an-independent-distribution-strategy-amidst-pandemics-and-streaming-wars/#.YJVlibVKhPZ
Ahir, Kumar (2019) – “How can OTT trump the next way of entertainment with Virtual Reality?”:
https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-can-ott-trump-the-next-way-of-entertainment-with-virtual-reality-6a8d1e86a8c
Roy, Nipu (2016) – Dhaka Tribune – “The death of cinemas in Bangladesh”: https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2016/04/23/death-cinemas-bangladesh#sthash.MPglupov.dpuf
Sreenivasan, Deepthi (2017) – “Movie’ing mission”: https://www.asianage.com/life/more-features/250217/movieing-mission.html
Joshi, Namrata – The Hindu (2018) – “BYOFF reinvents itself at 15”:
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/byoff-reinvents-itself-at-15/article22828793.ece
Hammond, Clare (2019) – “Rohingya community media faces challenges in most populous refugee camp”: https://ijnet.org/en/story/rohingya-community-media-faces-challenges-most-populous-refugee-camp