Baahubali effect: Assamese movie gets replaced, Sarbananda Sonowal pushes for regional film growth policy

Even as Bahubali wrested Assamese fun-filled action film Local Kungfu 2 out of a number of cinemas, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal directed the Regional Government Film and Television Institute to formulate a comprehensive and conclusive policy for the growth of the regional film industry and safe-guarding its interests.

Pabitra Margherita, chairman of the institute said to Firstpost, “He has instructed us to devise a policy to protect the interests of the regional film industry taking all the stakeholders into confidence. The meeting was held on Friday.”

“The chief minister has set two strict and broad guidelines for the policy. Firstly, it has to be acceptable to all stakeholders. Secondly, it has to be devised as early as possible,” he added. Last month, Sonowal declared a policy to provide financial assistance of Rs50 lac to re-open cinemas which have already shut down and Rs25 lac to renovate the older ones.

Margherita maintained that apart from that, upgrade of the community halls into cinemas to show regional cinema, formulation of special rules to reserve at least one show in halls for local films having a certain percentage of seat occupancy, are all on the cards.

The Assam chief minister’s initiative is seen in the light of a controversy created by the director of the Assamese film Local Kungfu 2 who alleged ‘outsider’s influence’ in removing his film from theatres in Assam after Baahubali’s release.

Kenny Deori Basumatary, the director of the regional film told Firstpost, “In spite of having 60-80% occupancy of seats on a Thursday and several housefulls and near-housefulls all week, the Baahubali distributor for the NorthEast region and the multiplex programmers in Mumbai and Delhi have removed our movie and given all shows to Baahubali, leaving us with zero shows. Only one theatre— Vandana in Guwahati— has retained us for the second week as it is not remote-controlled from outside.”

Arun Lochan Das, a reputed film critic in Assam said in this context, “It is not the first time a popular regional film has been removed from the theatres to accommodate a Bollywood flick.” He said that even a hit Assamese film takes at least two weeks to recover its cost, but by that time often a Bollywood film is released and the regional one gets removed.

“It is one of the reasons why Assam’s film industry has not seen a hit film for a long time. The last Assamese film that I remember as a hit was ‘Ramdhenu’, released five years back,” he said. About Local Kungfu 2, he said that the film is of the serio-comedy genre and has made viewers laugh from throughout. “Apart from the comedy element, the well-crafted scenes of martial art combats drew the audience to the halls. It had the scope of being a hit,” he added.

Local Kungfu 2 is a sequel to Local Kungfu, that was released in 2013. The pirated versions of it went viral on Youtube. A Youtube shows the number of uploads of the 1 hour 23 minutes-long film in various channels. Basumatary says that infact the film got several lac views, as many people uploaded it on different Youtube channels.

“Despite the film being freely available on Youtube, the prequel did not run into loss, as the production cost was as low as Rs96,000. The film was made by local martial art artists with not even a single known face,” Arun Lochan Das said. But Basumatary, points out that this is not the case with the sequel.

“The production cost of Local Kungfu 2 was Rs 22 lakhs. For post-production work, another Rs 8 lakhs was spent, which came from crowd-funding. Normally Rs 30 to 40 lakhs is spent for the making of an Assamese film,” he said.

Though the film has grossed only Rs 18 lakhs in the first nine days after it’s release on 19 April, Das expects that it will still not run into loss despite all the craze for Baahubali.

“There is still a demand for such local films in smaller centres. If the film is run in those centres, it still has the potential to make money,” he said.

Pabitra Margherita said in this regard, “The big number of Assamese films that have bombed at the box office in the last five years gives one the impression that, the local people have rejected Assamese visual arts, which certainly is not the case. Mobile theatres in Assam are still doing good business.”

Assam has a history of mobile theatres where a theatre company travels from one place to another with makeshift stages to present dramas. According to Margherita’s estimate, there are nearly 35 such companies.

“But we do not have cinemas in most of the places where these theatres reach. This is the reason why many film lovers in those areas do not get to watch an Assamese film, even if they want to,” he says.

Durlov Boruah, the Executive Producer of Local Kungfu 2 points out, “ We released the film in 43 halls out of which barely 20 are in good condition and pay any revenue. If mega budget films like Baahubali take up those 20 screens, how will regional cinema survive?”

“The idea behind the new comprehensive plan as directed by the chief minister is not only about making good films but also about taking them to a market where there is a demand for them,” says Margherita.