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What’s in a name, you may say echoing the sentiment of the great Bard of Avon and yet PVR, these three initials have come to represent quality cinema, films that might not have found their way to India. And this is because it is run by those who are deeply fond of cinema. Kamal Gianchandani (40) is at the head of PVR, which initially stood for Priya Village Roadshow but "now stands for nothing." Yet it has become a brand. "We visit the markets in Cannes, Berlin and other festivals and have an agent in the US and we go in for off-beat films," says Gianchandani, who claims to have been in the business for 10-11 years but knows the difference between Hollywood’s escapist fare and the other coast cinema and has, therefore, targeted this market. "It is simple business but we have developed a trust with our buyers. We don’t aim for high profits, but we honour our commitments," he goes on, "meaning less is more in contrast to greed and big profits and names such titles as Kill Bill, Sex, Lies & Videotape, Aviator and Tree of Life among others. There are 240 titles and all outstanding ones, the latest being Killing Them Softly, a delightful dialogue-heavy drama with two players on the screen and different pairs as the seven hardened criminals reveal their modus operandi, a scathing satire and doses of graphic violence. "America is not a country, it’s a business," is the punch line.
When A.M.Tariq, Chairman of Indian Motion Pictures Export Corportion, fired the first salvo against Hollywood companies in the early 1970s by not renewing their licences, he must have envisaged a larger playing field but the follow up wasn’t good enough. The Kinematograph Rental Society (KRS), which comprises eight Hollywood companies, managed to get it renewed but these had to be screened by a panel. Later, this too was done away with. We have all grown up on Hollywood westerns and comedies but they have their limitations. Even in the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, greater attention is paid to European cinema, which deals with life per se. It is like an essay narrated at a leisurely pace but making a final statement. Now after decades of trial and error, or error and more error, we seem to have finally metamorphosed into more discerning or selective cinema. After all, cinema should cater to a wide variety of tastes.
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Actually PVR is doing
exactly what the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) should
have done. But it had two handicaps — one that it was a government
body and the other that it did not set up its own chain of theatres.
PVR has 42 multiplexes in 23 cities with four in Mumbai — Juhu,
Phoenix-Parel, Goregaon and Mulund. The other cities include Delhi,
Baroda, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Allahabad and Pune.