KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 — Newly appointed board member of the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (Finas) R. Denes Kumar has proposed bringing the Malaysian Film Festival to India as an initiative to nurture local film talents besides inspiring industry players to expand their knowledge in filmmaking.
The 38-year-old actor-cum-producer said he encourages local filmmakers to venture beyond the local market as the exposure could inspire various ideas on the aspects of filmmaking.
“The purpose of bringing the Malaysian Film Festival to India is to interest people on the diverse culture of Malaysians via the different lingual films, mainly Malay, Chinese and Tamil, which would express the significance of our story to the eye of the world.
“As an industry, a collaboration with the world’s largest producer of films (India) would be an encouraging platform for our local filmmakers.
“In the event of this joint venture, local film producers would be motivated to produce more quality films that can be released to a larger-scale audience,” he told Bernama in an exclusive interview.
Denes, who is also an emcee and a film distributor, said Malaysia has many technical experts who are eager to work with experienced crews from India besides having a number of attractive locations that might captivate the Indian filmmakers to shoot their films here.
“I want to bring technical experts from the Indian film industry to work with our local crew. This kind of exposure helps our local talents gain some knowledge behind producing an international level cut content,” said the actor, who produced four local Indian films with one film released internationally — in Singapore and the United Kingdom.
Denes, who heads the Indian Content and Indian Subcontinent Market committee under Finas, said there are plans to increase the local Indian films’ box office revenue's contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He said that for instance, the local comedy-drama film Vedigundu Pasangge, produced under his production in 2018, made history as the highest-grossing Tamil-language film in Malaysia when it reaped RM1.3 million at the box office.
On the new norm in shooting (for a production) after movement control order, Denes said shooting can be held as long as the regulations set under the standard operating procedures (SOPs) are observed, such as by providing sanitisers, wearing protective masks, and avoiding close physical contact.
Denes opined that the cinema industry will bounce back in the wake of Covid-19 as many are eager to watch movies in theatres.
“Though many decided to watch movies through the small screen such as Direct-to-Home (DTH) television platform in the new norm, I feel (that) cinemas will bounce back once the situation comes back to normal, he said. — Bernama
