'RRR' Director S.S. Rajamouli to Launch Applause Entertainment, Film Companion Show 'Modern Masters' (EXCLUSIVE)

Focus on "RRR" director S.S. Rajamouli to launch "Modern Masters", a documentary series about contemporary Indian designers.

The series is co-produced by the prolific content production arm of Aditya Birla Group, worth $60 billion Applause Entertainment, led by Indian television pioneer Sameer Nair, and Film Companion, one of India's leading English-language entertainment journalism platforms, led by former Variety Anupama Chopra.

Initiated by former Film Companion journalist Baradwaj Rangan and Avinash Prakash, who works for the platform, the series grew as Chopra felt the lack of credible documentaries on contemporary Indian cinema.

"I feel like the Indian film industry is not very good at l 'archiving," Chopra told Variety. "I couldn't even think of one or two really solid documentaries, which capture an artist in one place and one time, which then becomes a portrait not just of the artists, but also of that specific zeitgeist and that specific moment. of history. ."

Nair added: "Usually when you talk about masters it always goes back to the 1960s and 1970s , and the big arthouse movements and all that, so the idea was to explore more modern contemporary creators, to dive deep into their skin and into their minds."

The choice of Rajamouli as the subject of the first documentary is not surprising, given that the filmmaker is currently on a white heat streak during US awards season with "RRR".

Chopra calls the series the deepest dive she has ever undertaken in her career, as the entertainment journalism format is generally limited to promotional interviews or interviews lasting 40 to 60 minutes. The "Modern Masters" format allowed him to go deeper into the subjects. The documentary Rajamouli, for example, follows him to Japan for the release of "RRR" in that country and to the United States as part of the film's awards promotion tour.

"Rajamouli's journey from being a Telugu-speaking filmmaker to a pan-Indian filmmaker , to now a global filmmaker is unparalleled," said Chopra, adding that while the late Oscar winner Satyajit Ray had his audience in the West, much like Mira Nair, they did not have the same trajectory as Rajamouli, whose market and global footprint continues to expand.

"Ten years later, Rajamouli will be in a different place than he is today But that should be the definitive portrait of the man and the artist right now,” Chopra said. such a powerful force in India - I think we need to record this, and that's what Modern Masters is.

Others featured in the series are secret at this time.

The documentaries will run between 60 and 90 minutes each and the series is heading to a major streamer within a second half of 2023. Nair believes that with streamers turning the world into a global village and growing international awareness of the Indian film industry, there will be widespread interest in the series.

Beyond India, the series' logical expansion point would be other industries South Asian filmmakers, Nair and said Chopra. "The global south would be a good hunting ground for masters - starting with India, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, there are so many," Nair said. .

The next step for Applause in the unscripted space is a documentary about the effect of climate change in India, Food Logistics in India and a documentary series on Bollywood superstar Salman Khan, directed by Viraf Sarkari in collaboration with Salman Khan Films and Wizcraft, which is in post. There is also...