Don't aim to make cult films. Only a few watch them.

One lazy afternoon I watched a Tamil film called Oram Po at Udhayam theatre in Chennai. I had decided to duck into the theatre to escape a really hot afternoon. The show had started when I entered and as I found my way to my seat the noisy crowd of students were having fun throwing peanut shells at each other. I had chosen Oram Po because I thought it was a flop movie but when my eyes got used to the darkness I realized that the hall was full and the audience was roaring in laughter. Later I contacted Pushkar and Gayatri the directors of the film and they readily agreed to be interviewed. It was interesting take on the art of film making by these two young filmmakers. Pushkar feels that being considered as makers of cult films is actually not a good thing as such films are seen only by a few people as opposed to mainstream cinema which is watched by people in the hundreds of thousands. Gayatri and Pushkar are married to each other after they met during college in Chennai. Their friendship developed then into a longer-term relationship. They discussed their college days while doing a course in Visual Communications in Loyola College. They felt it was a very interesting course when compared to doing a regular degree course. After they went for a short course in filmmaking to the United states they came back to dig deep into their own experiences while growing up in Chennai and it was those little experiences including auto rickshaw racing and bike re-modeling that gave them the seed of an idea for making the film Oram Po.

The film starring Arya and Pooja was a huge hit. It also featured John Vijay who was first seen on television and then worked for FM radio. He is probably the quirkiest actor to appear in Tollywood films. Pushkar and Gayatri’s second film was called Va Quarter Cutting, which turned out to be a delightful movie that could simultaneously be considered mainstream and cult film. It went into the details of a dry-day (alcohol free) in Chennai. These are usually days on which National leaders were born or died or achieved a career milestone. The Government of India tries to promote abstinence by declaring the occasional alcohol free days. The film was also a trip into the criminal underbelly of Chennai. SPB Charan and John Vijay play critical roles in the film in which two people go in pursuit of a bottle of rum. Gayatri and Pushkar are trained filmmakers as opposed to somebody who went into filmmaking just because it was their passion. They are now working on their third movie and listening to the script it promises to be a riot. Listen to them as they talk about their life thus far.