Hindi
Arunoday producer collects $10,000 funding from web users
MUMBAI: Indian filmmaker Partho Sengupta has sought funding from the crowd for his upcoming project Arunoday (Sunrise), a psychological thriller that addresses the taboo of child abuse in India.
The project has attracted over 80 crowd-funders on the website indiegogo.com who have contributed over $10,000 for the film. “We have extensively used Facebook, Twitter and email to campaign for the funding,” avers the filmmaker.
The deadline for the project to achieve its goal on indiegogo is 28 May. The film is likely to get into the production mode this winter.
Sengupta had to turn to crowd funding after he failed to find an Indian lead producer for the project which had generated co-production interest from a Dutch production house.
Similar was the case of Onir. After being refused financial backing from several film financers due to the film‘s controversial subject matter, the filmmaker took to Facebook and pulled in donations from far flung countries like the US and Australia.
Collectively, more than one third of the film‘s Rs 30 million budget was raised via the web, with major backers coming in the form of the US-based psychotherapist Sarah Loper Sengupta and The Humsafar Trust, a gay rights campaign group.
Hindi
Rashmika Mandanna, Shanaya Kapoor and Naila Grrewal climb IMDb’s Indian celebrity rankings
Upcoming films and returning shows are driving fan interest across Bollywood and streaming
MUMBAI: Bollywood’s popularity contest has a new weekly scorecard, and the numbers are telling. IMDb’s Popular Indian Celebrities list for this week places Shanaya Kapoor at number six, buoyed by buzz around her film Tu Yaa Main. Naila Grrewal slots in at seven on the back of the returning comedy series Maamla Legal Hai, while Rashmika Mandanna climbs to eighth, riding mounting anticipation for Cocktail 2.
The list, available exclusively on the IMDb app for Android and iOS, tracks trending Indian entertainers and filmmakers each week, drawing on data from more than 200m monthly visits to the platform worldwide.
Further down the rankings, Raaka is keeping two of its biggest names in the spotlight. Deepika Padukone holds 11th position, with Allu Arjun close behind at 13th, as the film continues to find traction with audiences.
The list offers fans a weekly pulse on who is breaking through, who is holding steady, and who is fading. It is a barometer as unsparing as the box office itself.
