Lumiere wants to make world cinema ‘interesting’

NDTV Lumiere is the world cinema channel from NDTV and brings contemporary international movies from around the world

The world cinema initiative from NDTV, NDTV Lumiere, was launched in three phases, much unlike a television channel. First, the titles were launched in theatres, followed by DVDs and then the channel, which is only six months old.

Lumiere buys prints of international movies at international film festivals such as Cannes, and releases them here in theatres and on its channel. Just like any producer, there is a revenue sharing arrangement between them and the theatre owners.

Its first movie screening, that of the movie The Orphanage, was on May 30th last year, while the DVDs were launched in September 2008. For its DVD venture, Lumiere has tied up with Excel Home Videos. It has more than 400 outlets in 24 cities.

Lumiere has released 26 films in the last one year, across theatres such as PVR, Inox and Sterling.

“There was always an audience for world cinema, who couldn’t get easy access to these films. The only way would be at film festivals that happen once a year,” says Dhruvank Vaidya, business head, NDTV Lumiere. Although UTV’s world cinema channel, World Movies, has been around for a while, Vaidya says that more players will be good for the genre.

Targeted at the urban upscale audience in the age group of 18-45 years, it is an attractive proposition for brands which look for high-end consumers. There are typically two challenges that a world cinema channel faces - to break the perception in people’s mind and to lure the existing English movie channel viewers.

Lumiere decided on subtitles over dubbing as the latter tends to lose out on the essence and tone of the movie. “Since the target group is existing viewers of English channels, they are used to following subtitles. Thankfully, English channels have also started providing subtitles,” Vaidya adds.

While DVDs are a hit with the older audience, the theatrical releases tend to attract the younger ones. He adds, “This happens because youngsters prefer to watch a movie with friends and an interesting title attracts them, whereas the older audience likes to watch it at leisure time.”

As of now, NDTV Lumiere gets equal proportions of revenue from each of its verticals. However, going forward, the company hopes television will contribute higher revenues. The channel will soon be available on major DTH platforms.

Lumiere has tied up with restaurants and pubs across six cities for the screening of movies. Some of the places where movies are screened are Zenzi in Mumbai, Pebble in Bengaluru, Loungefly in Goa and Tabula Rasa in New Delhi. The screenings are treated as branded or sponsored properties. “This way, brands get to target their consumers and there is no spillage,” Vaidya adds.

Lumiere also gets to build a database this way, which the company uses by sending out personalised mailers and newsletters every week. Till now, the channel has a database of 55,000+. This also encourages sampling for its properties.

Next month, Lumiere will host an ‘Experience Cannes’ festival, where it will feature Cannes winners or Cannes nominated movies at PVR Cinemas in Mumbai.

Lumiere wants to stand for ‘contemporary’ world cinema. Prospective viewers harbour certain preconceived notions that world cinema is usually boring. “This could be because of the kind of movies the viewers have been exposed to earlier on. We want to tell people that world cinema is not boring, just that it’s in a different language,” Vaidya explains.

In the next 3-5 years, Vaidya says that world cinema will command 25-30 per cent of overall share of the movie genre (English and other international languages combined).