Palador Pictures finalizes association with Tata Sky

Mumbai, Oct 12 (UNI) Palador Pictures, the only Indian firm to have bought legal rights of nearly 1,000 world cinema titles, announced an exclusive tie-up with Tata Sky, the joint venture between the TATA Group and STAR, marking a revolution of sorts for Indian cinema aficionados.

Most carefully chosen award wining American, European and Asian films will now be available on Tata Sky's pay-per-view service, Showcase TM. Starting today Tata Sky has lined up eight of the world's best movies from the Palador library for the coming five weeks. The movies span different genres and showcase works of acclaimed film makers like Akira Kurosawa, Jim Jarmusch, Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang, Wong-Kar Wai and the likes.

With Palador, Tata Sky will feature for the first time on Indian television one of the most acclaimed movie of all times, Akira Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai'. Winner of numerous global awards including the Academy Awards (Oscar) USA, the film will be available on order on Tata Sky from today.

Speaking to reporters today, Palador Pictures Founder and Managing Director Gautam Sikhnis said, ''We have worked hard to create a collection of the best-of-the-best movies from across the world and are currently nurturing around 1,000 titles in our ever-growing library. And now, the task of taking them to the discerning Indian viewers is made easy with Tata Sky satellite television service. We promise a future of the best of world cinema to every Tata Sky subscriber.'' Palador Pictures invested over USD 4 million (Rs 16 crore) to acquire legal rights to nearly 1,000 English and foreign language film titles in the World Cinema category. The Palador catalogue boasts of award-winning classics directed by the masters of yesteryears and the current crop of mavericks -- Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Abbas Kiarostami, David Lynch and many more. The Palador collection covers all genres and eras and is probably the single largest collection of quality films in the world.

Speaking on the occasion, Palador Pictures Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director Mohan Polamar said, ''Lots of film admirers who felt that the TV and film libraries did not have much of the good foreign language films will now rejoice. They do not need to waste their time scouring the streets for their favourite movies. Palador promises them the delight of all those movies without having to hunt for them.'' Palador Pictures has raised private investments of USD 6 million with a revenue target of USD 20 million by March 2009. The Company is leaving no stone unturned to ensure an endemic reach of their finest foreign film collection to the Indian audience and thereby deeply entrench itself into the globally-evolved Indian mind space, Mr Polamar informed.

UNI