Moser Baer Entertainment has partnered with Palador Pictures to sell and distribute 50 foreign language film titles in DVD format through the latter’s more than 2,000 retail outlets across the nation. The deal also marks the entry of Moser Baer in the premium category with the DVDs priced at INR 399.

Palador Pictures has acquired legal rights to almost thousand world cinema titles through an investment of over USD 4 million in acquiring them. Titles acquired include award-winning foreign film classics directed by acclaimed filmmakers, such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Luc Godard, Froncois Trauffat, Abbas Kiarostami and David Lynch. This collection is one of the single largest collections of top-quality films in the world.

Speaking on this development, Harish Dayani, Chief Executive, Entertainment Business, Moser Baer, added, “At less than INR 400, we will bring the premium home video titles to the Indian consumer through this tie-up with Palador Pictures. Imagine you can now legally own 10 Bergman classics or 10 Kurosawas in less than INR 4,000! We at Moser Baer are happy of the efforts of a young company like Palador and are enthusiastic about being able to launch a range of premium products. We hope that this alliance with Palador is only the beginning and that we can collaborate with Palador for more than these 50 titles in the future”.

The DVDs to be released include Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Infernal Affairs (Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award winner Departed was inspired by this movie); Wong-Kar Wai’s In The Mood for Love, which won the Cannes award, the cult Asian horror film The Eye; Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Wild Strawberries; Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man starring Johnny Depp; and the original monster movie, Godzilla.

“This alliance is the beginning of a world cinema movement in India. The tie-up with Moser Baer Entertainment will now allow Indians from across the country to legally own a Bergman or Kurosawa or any of the other masters and be suitably awed by their art, craft and wizardry over the cinematic medium. I sincerely hope this rejuvenates a cult kind of movement for world cinema and foreign films in smaller cities in addition to the metros,” remarked Gautam Shiknis, Founder and Managing Director, Palador Pictures.

“No matter the language, world cinema seems to connect to almost everyone through basic life situations and in that respect, it becomes a universal language, understood and experienced by all. The techniques, perfected by some foreign language film directors, have, over the years, become art forms and are emulated even today by filmmakers all over. It would be a crime to exclude Indian cinema lovers from these seminal works,” said Mohan Polmar, Co-founder and Joint Managing Director of Palador Pictures.

Shiknis further said, “Economic prosperity has always preceded trend-setting lifestyle patterns in culture and arts, more so in chaotic but thriving democracies. While Indian ethnocentric culture, language and arts will continue to rule the roost in India, the new globalisation spree of our country actually mandates us Indians to be familiar with the best of arts and culture from all over the world. Palador Pictures, with its core strength in the ability to predict content and market trends in media space is more than a content aggregator. It is an integrated media enterprise that spans production, content acquisition, programming and distribution in the areas of film, publishing, Internet and radio”.

Moser Baer, the largest home entertainment company in India, is the pioneer in offering home videos in almost all popular Indian languages. The offerings include home video titles in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali and non-film categories. Of the 10,000 titles it has acquired in all the popular languages, 3,000 have already been released in the market.

Palador is maintaining a revenue target of USD 20 million by 2009 and has already raised private investments worth USD 6 million. The company is optimistic of a wide reach for its collection of foreign titles and is confident of creating a niche for itself in the global Indian community.