Kelli Holsopple and Chriselle AlmeidaThe latest micro-budget indie film to employ the internet to build a large audience is also the first-ever cross-cultural Indian lesbian love story. Meet When Kiran Met Karen, and prepare to grow well acquainted because you're going to be reading, hearing and seeing a lot about this movie in 2008. "An audience is already aware and excited about this movie," said its co-writer and director, Manan Singh Katohora. India-born Katohora came to the USA a decade ago and has proactively used the internet, particularly news groups, to create a networking vessel for artists of Indian-descent living around the world, particularly in North America. Katohora, 32, has built a database of more than 100,000 people, and each already has varying degrees of awareness about When Kiran Met Karen (WKMK) and the film has yet to play a single festival or ink a distribution deal. "We kept feeding our information to everyone and they have now become part of the journey," Katohora, whose debut feature, Arya, was released in 2003, said.Cultivating new and untraditional marketing techniques is the road to success for today's micro-budget indie filmmakers. Comedian Tyler Perry built a huge movie career by networking through Black churches. Documentaries, particularly political ones like Iraq for Sale and Outfoxed, generated buzz at house party screenings. And the internet is critical to self and hybrid distribution strategies, for proof look no farther than new age philosophical tract The Secret which sold more than 250,000 DVD copies via the internet before it even became available through traditional retail outlets such as Amazon, and the little picture that could - Four Eyed Monsters - a small romantic charmer with a dedicated website that the filmmakers exploited along with YouTube, MySpace, and e-mail lists to bring the movie to the world. Now more than 1 million people have seen part or all of Four Eyed Monsters."It's been very helpful," Katohora said of the high internet profile for WKMK, which has just completed post-production. "Distributors have been asking for screeners for the past three months." WKMK was shot in 27 days. The production crew numbered about 15 and the project was videotaped on Hi Def cameras at a total cost of $120,000. When it came time to film the movie last fall in New York City, Katohora looked to his internet base for support."And when people saw that we weren't just talking, that the film was actually happening, they came forward and helped us," Katohora said. A man of Indian descent donated use of his $10 million Long Island mansion for filming. Another Indian man donated use of his swank Times Square hotel. Katohora provided the initial financing but then an Indian-born man in Michigan stepped forward with the remaining funds and became the film's executive producer. It's understandable why all this has happened, as it is near impossible not to get caught up in the enthusiasm that Katohora and his collaborators have for their project. But how will a lesbian love story play in India, a country with deep conservative cultural and religious traditions? Katohora's plan is to release the film first in North America and Europe and exploit positive buzz to score a distribution deal in India.
The film is about a major Bollywood actress - Kiran - who falls in love with an American female Caucasian journalist - Karen - during a 4-day publicity stop in New York City. At least two things promise some controversy - the fact that Kiran is Hindu, and a frank sex scene between the two women.
"It won't surprise me that there will be some people who will be critical and who will say things that are hurtful. But I'm trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that we live in a more progressive world," said Chriselle Almeida, an Indian-born New York-based actress who plays Kiran.
Katohora was raised in the Sikhism religion but no longer formally practices the faith. He said there is little chance the film will find distribution in India without undergoing at least a small degree of censorship.
"It's going to be very challenging. When it comes to sexuality, India censors come down very hard," he said. "It's my dream for the film to get a good release in India. It's my land. It's my people. I want them to see it how I made it, not with five scenes missing."
Director - Manan Katohora
But for the film to be seen in India, Katohora reluctantly accepts the fact that he will need to compromise and trim the film to appease Indian censors.
I'm sure they will ask us to tone it down and remove a few things here and there," Katohora said. "And I will to some degree, as long as they don't take away the heart and soul of the film I will be open to (cuts)."
Katohora said awareness of the film created by internet hype cannot be leveraged to persuade Indian censors to leave the movie alone. "Because none of these people are the decision-makers when it comes to India censorship," Katohora said. And even with the film's growing profile, the Indian film establishment has not stepped up to champion WKMK. "I didn't get encouragement from Industry folks in India," Katohora said, adding that talk of the film within India is mostly "hush, hush."
The film received a burst of publicity in India two years ago when Katohora first began guiding the project toward production and a major Bollywood actress - Perizaad Zorabian - was attached to play Kiran. Zorabian's involvement in the project created international buzz and proved that the film could not escape controversy.
"She loves the script," Katohora said of Zorabian, and added that the actress soon dropped out of the project, deferring to the societal, family and career pressures generated by an Indian movie star of her profile becoming involved in a lesbian love story that contained a frank sex scene.
"It was difficult to get actors for the roles - particularly the actresses because of the strong sexuality of the film," Katohora said. "Not many Indian actresses were willing to take on the role."
Katohora found his leads in Almeida, and in Kelli Holsopple, who plays the out-lesbian journalist. None of the principal collaborators in front of or behind the camera are gay or lesbian in real life.
Almeida, whose family is of Portuguese descent, lived in India until she was 14 years old. She is Catholic and now lives in the USA, but did grow up amidst traditional India and Hinduism. She says that her Indian-American parents are forward-thinking, and that they once saw her perform a same-sex kiss in a college play, and that they have not raised objections to their daughter's participation in WKMK. "I keep waiting for them to go 'I don't know about this,' but they've been really wonderful," Almeida said.
Because the Kiran character is inexperienced in matters of same-sex love, the two actresses did not rehearse the sex scene prior to filming in order to interject their own personal awkwardness into their onscreen selves.
"That was something that was truly organic," Almeida said. "Not rehearsing was a good idea because rehearsing might have made it too clean (graceful)."
Katohora is proud of the artistic quality of the sex scene. "Very raw and very sexual. It's as normal as watching any male-female sex scene," he said.
Almeida and Holsopple shared a bedroom in the Long Island mansion where much of the filming was done and where the cast stayed during production. The women developed a fast friendship off-screen and Almeida said it had the tone that exists in a relationship between two high school girls who are best friends.
"I tried to remember what it felt like to have a best friend who is a girl when growing up….All I had to do was add in the physical," she said. "Here is a person that I connect with so much who is so physically lovely, so why not. What's the difference that she's a woman?"
Indian audiences are not completely unfamiliar with lesbian film stories. An earlier film - Fire (1996) - had a lesbian story line and was released in India. "And there were bans and protests," Katohora said. He said the strategy to win acceptance in India for WKMK was to make a realistic film that told a human love story in a mature and un-sensationalistic way.
"It's a movie with substance - that's the way we approached it," Katohora said.
Tushar Unadkat is the film's production designer and acts onscreen in a supporting role. Unadkat lived in India until age 25 and was raised a Hindu. He now lives in Toronto and describes himself as more "spiritual" than traditional Hindu.
Unadkat said the project was an enlightening journey for everybody who worked on it, particularly those who had been raised under the guidance of traditional Indian culture. Unadkat said the experience taught him to "be more human, and less of a hypocrite."
"It was nice to see how people who might have been uncomfortable (at the start of production) find their comfort by the end of the project," Unadkat said. In the beginning of the film, Kiran is involved in a heterosexual relationship (her boyfriend is played by actor Samrat Chakrabarti) in which she is unfulfilled. By the end of the film, Kiran has learned a lot from meeting Karen.
"She finds that love she is looking for in Karen," Katohora said. He hopes that a distribution deal for the film in his native India will generate reasoned debate on the subject of same-sex love in a diverse but conservative country of 1 billion people.
"We might be able to win some hearts," the director said. Unadkat agreed.
"It's controversial. And people are shy in talking about it. But we want to generate discussion. The debate is very healthy and I think it's going to open up a lot of minds that have been closed for years," Unadkat said.