From dancing lights in the depths of a coal mine to flickering images on a big screen – that is the journey of Fireflies in the Abyss– a feature-length documentary film about the dangerous practice of “rat hole” coal mining in Meghalaya.
Fireflies had the unique distinction of being the only feature-length documentary from India to be selected for the prestigious Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto recently. After it’s large-canvas debut, the film is preparing to hit theatres in India in early July. That, in itself, is a rare success for a documentary in the Indian market.
The film’s director Chandrasekhar Reddy said he was in the process of finalizing arrangements for its commercial release with Drishyam Films, the Mumbai-based studio that has produced small and independent feature films.
In the past couple of years, a handful of documentaries have been screened in the PVR multiplex chain in Indian metros under the Director’s Rare banner. The former head of PVR Director’s Rare, Shiladitya Bora, is now the CEO of Drishyam Films. Despite this prior experience, Reddy says, distributing Fireflies, the first documentary film release for Drishyam, will be a learning experience.
Reddy expects his film to start with a very limited release in the metros of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, and expand to other cities depending on its initial performance.
He views the release more as an exercise in making the film more widely accessible than as a revenue earner.
The filmmaker, who shuttles between India and the UK, shot Fireflies over nearly two years beginning in 2012.
The film tells the story of coal miners in Meghalaya’s Jaintia Hills, focusing on a child miner named Suraj and the 11-year-old’s efforts to escape the harsh world of mining and go to school instead. Reddy spent several months getting to know the miners and living with them, enabling him to also film some riveting footage within the mines.
Fireflies played late last month at Toronto’s Hot Docs, the biggest documentary film festival in North America. It premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea last October, and has since featured in the market sections of a few film festivals in India and abroad.
While the commercial market for documentary films is still very limited, the US remains the biggest market for theatrical releases, followed by the UK, while the broadcast market is bigger in Europe.
In recent years, Netflix has emerged as an influential online platform. Filmmakers like Reddy are hoping the latest move by Drishyam Films will expand the market for documentaries in India as well.
(Indira Kannan is a senior journalist currently based in Toronto)
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