Main Bhi Quentin

Add humility to that and you get Vinay Subramanian and Mridul Toolsidass. The duo, who look as though they've trespassed into the editing suite from a college canteen, are creating a minor stir in the young filmmaking community in Mumbai with Missed Call, a Rs 27-lakh film shot in 12 days. So small are their dreams and ambitions that even their bribes to hacks are nominal: I am offered a Hajmola candy to keep myself glued to the video screen, even popcorns don't quite fit into their budget. Missed Call is a charming, cheeky and in the end poignant film about a youngster's attempt to make a movie. The idea, obviously, has emerged from their own lives but the film never becomes overly self-indulgent. Shot with a single-perspective camera without any concocted frames, zooms, pans or tilts, it's also a self-reflexive film on what the process of filmmaking entails.

Realising that their offbeat project won't find a conventional producer, the two kids (one a Xavier's graduate, the other a CA) tirelessly raised the money from a few corporates to form their own company, Reelism Films. Their optimism about the changing norms of the film industry is grounded in the workable, "Filmmaking is not an elitist enterprise any more. Anyone can use a handycam. As a youngster you must be willing to work at reduced costs, that's all."

Like Vinay and Mridul, Ruchi Narain also believes that you can come up with a truly independent film if you can raise the money for it on your own. "Only then can the fate of the film be in your control," she says. This 30-year-old self-confessed anpadh (illiterate) in cinema assisted Sudhir Mishra in Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, wrote Snip for Sunhil Sippy, assisted Mishra again in Calcutta Mail and Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi. Then one fine day she sent a business plan for a film to individual investors in the Middle East who had excess money to offload. And Rewind got made, without making "unnecessary compromises like item numbers and sex scenes". Set in Mumbai, it's about a girl whose boyfriend leaves her to marry her best friend. One year later he comes back to spend a night with her, during the course of which night his wife is killed. He has a clear alibi in his former girlfriend. So will she save him? Are things as black and white as they appear to be? The film may raise many questions but Ruchi has the answers to a new age director's problems—don't just think of the film alone. "It's not just a creative process but you need to sustain filmmaking economically, as a sound business venture," she says.

That creativity comes with economic freedom is something Shimit Amin and Shreeram Raghavan would vouch for. To them it was granted by Ram Gopal Verma. FTII graduate Raghavan was making films for ISRO and had shot a path-breaking video film with Raghuvir Yadav, Raman Raghav. He has taken full-time to feature films only now with Ek Haseena Thi."It's easier to do your kind of work today," he says.But he also feels independent films are yet to become a movement in India".It's not like China or Iran," he says. Saathiya director Shaad Ali calls it a boiling process, a trial and error time. For him "different" cinema can never be a collective effort but a personal agenda, to do your own kind of work. His intention is clear: "We need entertainment, not revolutionary cinema. Content is important and I'll always pitch it big, I can't restrict my vision." Coming up next from him: Bunty Aur Babli, an adventure film about the ambitions of two small-town people, starring Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek Bachchan.

Ab Tak Chappan's Amin feels that Indian film industry is a conservative business and will need a while to overhaul itself. But what is evident is that a total outsider like Amin, who worked in Los Angeles on cinematography, script development and editing, can today make a film in India without any exposure to Bollywood. What's more, he could even get appreciated. "There are more opportunities to get breaks," he says. And to do things your own way. In Ab Tak Chappan, "I just stuck to the story. I told it simply, never made it loud and didn't use any romance or song-and-dance as diversions."

Pankaj Advani's Cape Karma, produced by iDreams, aims to be as uncompromising in spirit. A surreal, psychological thriller, it's essentially about the interaction between two characters—Manav (Rahul Dev) and Maya (British actress Audrey Woodhouse). Advani feels that independent cinema can get more adventurous if digital filmmaking flourishes: "It gives makers a lot of freedom, you can experiment with more interesting subjects, it works quicker and cheaper."

I cap it with a fitting finale. Farhan Akhtar, the man who gave Hindi films a 'naya andaz' with Dil Chahta Hai, promises that his next, Lakshya, will be unlike the war movies Hindi cinema has seen. No overt jingoism, no Pak-bashing but some quiet introspection. And he is confident that the audiences will accept it. For him the biggest sign of changing times is that no particular genre is defining the trends. "It used to work in cycles—romance, then action, then family films. Now there is a broad acceptance for every kind of film. There is enough space for anyone."

Perhaps it's this that's keeping the new cinema alive—a lot of energy, introspection, anger, pragmatism and infectious optimism. Meanwhile, my friend continues to preserve the poster of his aborted film as a screensaver. But he is already thinking up his next project. One film might be dead but cinema has to live on.