Moser Baer partners with Palador to enters premium DVD market
November 23, 2007 4:38:09 PM IST
Bollywood Trade News Network
|
|
Palador Pictures, the only Indian firm to have bought legal rights to about 1,000 World Cinema titles has tied up with Moser Baer Entertainment, to sell and distribute 50 foreign language film titles in DVD format through the latter's over 2,000 key retail outlets across the country. This deal marks
the partnership between the two biggest players in their respective categories. The DVDs, each priced at Rs.399/- also marks the entry of Moser Baer Entertainment into premium category in their repertoire of DVD labels.
The foreign films being released in DVD are some of the most awarded and critically acclaimed films of all times. These include Akira Kurosawa's masterpieces 'Seven Samurai' & 'Yojimbo', 'Infernal Affairs' (which inspired Martin Scorsese's Academy Award winner 'Departed'), Wong-Kar Wai's
Cannes award winner 'In The Mood for Love', the cult Asian horror film 'The Eye', Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece 'Wild Strawberries', Jim Jarmusch's 'Dead Man' starring a young Johnny Depp and the mother of all monster movies - the original 'Godzilla'.
Says Gautam Shiknis, Founder & Managing Director of Palador Pictures, 'This alliance is the beginning of a World Cinema movement in India. The tie-up with Moser Baer Entertainment will now allow Indians from across the country to legally own a Bergman or Kurosawa or any of the other masters and be suitably awed by their art, craft and wizardry over the cinematic medium. I sincerely hope this rejuvenates a cult kind of movement for World Cinema and foreign films in smaller cities in addition to the metros.'
Palador Pictures has invested over USD 4 million (Rs.16 crore) to acquire legal rights to around thousand foreign language film titles in its World Cinema category. The Palador catalogue boasts of award-winning foreign film classics directed by the masters of yesteryears and the current crop of
mavericks: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Luc Godard, Froncois Trauffat, Abbas Kiarostami, David Lynch and many more. The Palador collection covers all genres and eras and is probably the single largest collection of quality films in the world.
Harish Dayani, Chief Executive - Entertainment Business, Moser Baer adds, 'At less than Rs.400, we will bring the premium home video titles to the Indian consumer through this tie up with Palador Pictures. Imagine you can now legally own 10 Bergman classics or 10 Kurosawas in less than Rs
4,000! We at Moser Baer are happy of the efforts of a young company like Palador and are enthusiastic about being able to launch a range of premium products. We hope that this alliance with Palador is only the beginning and that we can collaborate with Palador for more than these 50 titles
in the future.'
Enthuses Mohan Polamar, Co-Founder & Joint Managing Director of Palador Pictures, 'No matter the language, World Cinema seems to connect to almost everyone through basic life situations, and in that respect, it becomes a universal language - understood and experienced by all. The
techniques, perfected by some of the foreign language film directors, have, over the years, become art forms and are emulated even today by filmmakers all over. It would be a crime to exclude Indian cinema-lovers from these seminal works.'
Adds Shiknis, 'Economic prosperity has always preceded trend-setting lifestyle patterns in culture and arts, more so in chaotic but thriving democracies. While Indian ethnocentric culture, language and arts will continue to rule the roost in India, the new globalization spree of our country
actually mandates us Indians to be familiar with the best of arts and culture from all over the world. Palador Pictures, with its core strength in the ability to predict content and market trends in media space is more than a content aggregator. It is an integrated media enterprise that spans
production, content acquisition, programming and distribution in the areas of film, publishing, internet and radio.'
Moser Baer, World's second largest Optical Storage manufacturer is the first pan-India company to offer home videos in every popular language of India and it is today India's largest Home Entertainment Company. It currently offers home video titles in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali and non-film categories. Moser Baer has acquired the rights for close to 10,000 titles in all the popular languages and has already released close to 3,000 of them in the market. This is for the first time that Moser Baer will offer World Cinema home videos to the Indian consumer through its distribution network all across India.
Palador Pictures has raised private investments of US$ 6 million with a revenue target of US$ 20 million by March 2009. The company is leaving no stone unturned to ensure an endemic reach of their finest collection of foreign language films to the Indian audience and thereby deeply entrench itself into the globally-evolved Indian mind space.
|
|
|