Documentary “Seemantarekha”

Veteran film director Tanvir Mokammel has been among the pioneers of the parallel cinema in Bangladesh in early 1990s. And now he has embarked on a project to introduce the trend of crowd-funding to finance film making.

The director's latest documentary “Seemantarekha”(Border)  dealing with the effects of the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent has got stuck due to a fund crunch, forcing him to resort to crowd-funding of the project with a slew of incentives to potential contributors.

In an “open letter” to cinema lovers posted on his Facebook and shared by some others, Mokammel says 80 per cent of the shoot of the film in locales in India and Bangladesh has been completed but the remaining part has got stuck due to financial crisis.

Besides the 20 percent of the shooting, the documentary needs editing, background music and other post-production work to be completed, he says.

While the total budget for the documentary has been pegged at Taka 18 lakh, Taka 12 lakh has already been spent and the remaining part needs to be arranged, the director says adding that crowd-funding was resorted to since no commercial producer would come forward to back a project like “Seemantarekha.”

Mokammel says he wants to introduce crowd-funding in Bangladesh, a trend that is well established in the West, and is hopeful of getting a positive response.

In a bid to attract crowd-funding, Mokammel has listed five incentives to potential contributors including recording with gratitude the names of those who contribute 125 Dollars or more in the title sequence of the film, a DVD signed by him of the documentary and 20 invitation cards for the premiere of the film.