Become a producer with Rs 1 lakh with Ulta Palta director!

Bengaluru: NS Shankar, the director of the iconic movie Ulta Palta, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is returning to direction after a long gap and this time he has decided to take the crowd funding route to finance his new film Eega (now).

Shankar has established the Cinema Café, an association of like-minded film audience who seek to make films for the international audience based on Kannada nativity. The first film in this venture, Eega is an anthology of three stories; P Lankesh's Muttisikondavanu, Prathiba Nandakumar's Arundathi and P Mahamud's December 6.

Shankar wants this venture to be strictly crowd-funded.

"More than audience tastes, film making techniques and technology, it is the economics of film making and marketing them that has undergone monumental changes. Even the smallest of films are now being made for an universal audience. It is for this reason that Cinema Café is trying to bring together people with common interests to fund films," he said.

The minimum investment anyone can make for Eega is Rs.1 lakh and the maximum is Rs.5 lakh. "We want to keep the venture broad-based to spread the risk and small enough to be inclusive and participative. There will be approximately 50 investor-producers and transparency will be the key. Everyone will have access to the auditing of accounts and profit sharing will be quick. More importantly, we are trying to change the way films are marketed and sold. We are exploring the alternate marketing and not just the traditional ones," he said.

Shankar says the opportunity to turn producer through Cinema Café is open to everyone. Those interested can contact Cinema Café at cinemacafe109@gmail.com or on 94484 50950.

NS Shankar's first film, Ulta Palta, was launched on March 10, 1997, released on September 19 and celebrated 100 days in December of the same year. Seven technicians who worked in the film, including Shankar, composer V Manohar and cinematographer Ashok Cashyap produced the film. The film went on to be remade in Telugu and Tamil. Shankar's subsequent films did not quite achieve the same cult status as Ulta Pulta though.