Why Indian directors pitching their films as Oscars lateral entry?

KOLKATA: India's contender for Oscars has been courting controversy ever since a jury member resigned before the announcement. While the makers of 'Court' gearing up for their Oscar run, at least five other Indian films are still dreaming of being short-listed for the Academy nominations. The difference, however, is that they are not in the Foreign Language Film Category. The makers of these films are pitching to get considered for the mainstream category.

Very recently, Hema Malini had tweeted about how her daughter's bilingual movie ('Care of Footpath 2') in Kannada and Hindi has made a 'lateral entry' into the 2016 Oscars! Though not too many are familiar with the term called 'lateral entry', many are aware of how films like 'Jal' and 'DAM999' had on earlier occasions made lot of noise in connection of being shortlisted for Oscar nominations in the mainstream category. Last year, 'Jal' was in the race for being shortlisted in the Best Picture and Best Original Score nominations. Sonu Nigam and Bickram Ghosh had scored the music for 'Jal'. Apart from being shortlisted for the Best Picture nomination, three songs of 'DAM999' were among the 39 shortlisted for nominations in the Original Song category. The film was also in the race for nomination in the Original Score category.

Shortlisting of such movies has aroused the curiosity of many Indian directors whose film didn't make the final cut in the selection by the jury set up by the Film Federation of India. Can they too aspire to send their movies for the mainstream category?

According to Nisha Joseph of the Kochi-based All Lights Film Services that has been helping directors to submit their work to the Oscars since 2011, "Any country can send one film as its official entry in the Foreign Language Film Category. In India, this selection is done by a jury that's set up by the Film Federation of India. If the Academy norms are followed, any director can send in a film in the Best Picture category. People are referring to it as a 'lateral entry'."

Isn't there any qualitative yardstick for sending in the entries in this section? "Each year, the Academy receives a humungous amount of entries. These are then scrutinised and shortlisted. Normally, the shortlist is announced in the middle of December. For a movie to be short-listed requires it to be screened for seven consecutive days in Los Angeles. The required publicity and advertisement formalities have to be done as per the Academy norms. If it is a non-English language film, subtitles have to be there. The Academy has no submission fee," Joseph says, adding that her agency charges a fee of Rs 5 lakh (give or take Rs 50,000) for helping directors go ahead with the submission procedures.

At present, Joseph is working on sending four Indian movies in Konkani, Marathi, Malayalam and Hindi languages for being shortlisted though the makers of 'Care of Footpath 2' never approached her firm. In Joseph's view, Indian movies also have a strong potential in the Original score and Original song categories. Says composer Bickram Ghosh, "When our score for 'Jal' was shortlisted, the list also had two scores by AR Rahman as well. While one was for 'Hundred Foot Journey', the other was for 'Kochadaiiyaan'. I believe the work of Indian composers are of international standard. We are now more keen on exploring this avenue of getting nominated in the mainstream category and don't just want to pin our hopes only on nominations in the Foreign Language Film Category."