Pune: Ujwal Nirgudkar has patented technologies in film processing, and has worked in television too, mainly on the technical aspects.
But one of his most gruelling assignments was evaluating and voting for films and actors nominated for the Oscars Awards, presented last Sunday.
“Our evaluation process started as early as November. We started watching movies under various categories and began voting for them to whittle them down to the final nomination, and then further voting to select the final winners, after late January,” said Nirgudkar, a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts, and Sciences (AMPAS), which awards the Oscars every year.
In a freewheeling chat at Sanskrutik Katta, organized by the Pune Union of Working Journalists, Nirgudkar spoke about the challenges and shortcomings Indian films face on the world stage.
Around the world, more than half of the box office earnings are reaped by films made and produced in the US.
“In the US, for example, there are around 42,000 screens for a population of about 30 crore. In India, the number of screens is only around 13,000, for a population of more than 100 crore. Not many people have the means or a movie theatre near them, so that they can watch films. Thus, we have to look at digital distribution methods,” he added.
As far as digital methods go, AMPAS presented two editions of a white paper on the digital future of cinema, called the Digital Dilemma, written by film preservationist Milton Shefter.
Nirgudkar is part of a group which will release the white paper in Marathi and Hindi in collaboration with the Academy.
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