How a lesbian love story is bypassing censors online.

Pedro_P

JioCinema/Loneranger Productions

▼ Low-cost smartphones and cheap mobile data mean Indians are now hungrily consuming content over the small screen. And this is opening up a new world of creative freedom for the country's entertainment industry.
Film director Krishna Bhatt says the internet has given her "the power to show exactly the story I want to tell".
She has made two web-based shows. One of them, Maaya 2, centres around a lesbian love story - a subject that would have been very difficult to get into cinemas or on television in India.
"To show lovemaking in a theatre I will have to go through 10,000 censor rules," says Ms Bhatt.
"My kisses will get cut based on very stupid things. You're not allowed to show something like that even on TV."
While films and television series are governed by strict censorship rules in India, web-based shows have been largely unregulated - so far at least.
"If you can give everything you want to give without anybody breathing down your neck, it's like a new sense of freedom, it's like independence," says Ms Bhatt.
"That's what digital does for you."
Indian prime-time TV is largely dominated by family dramas that often go on for years, featuring thousands of episodes.
This not only limits opportunities for other shows to get on air, but also restricts the kind of stories that can be told.
So actors, writers and directors are enjoying new-found freedoms that online gives them.
At Chandivali Studio in north Mumbai, for example, they're filming a Hindi language show called Apharan (Kidnapping).
It will be a long day - filming began early in the morning and will go on until late in the evening. The race is on to complete the 11 episodes that are scheduled for release in November over ALTBalaji, a web-based video-on-demand platform available in 96 countries.
On an open-air set, built to look like a street market in a small Indian town, Arunoday Singh is playing the lead character in a plot about a former policeman caught in a kidnapping gone wrong.
He has appeared in several mainstream Bollywood movies, but always in smaller roles.
"I've gotten a bit pigeonholed in the Bollywood system for the last four to five years," he says. "I didn't become a big star, but neither am I unknown.
"So casting directors feel like they know what I'm capable of and they don't even give me an audition."
Online entertainment has opened new doors for him.
Apharan is just one of dozens of web series being made in India this year, as focus has turned to the opportunities presented by web-based entertainment.
"For actors, for writers especially, there's a lot more opportunity now, which is always nice, because it's a very cut-throat kind of a business," says Mr Singh.
Foreign companies see the potential as well, with Netflix and Amazon investing heavily in the Indian market.
But how do any of them hope to make money? (▪ ▪ ▪)

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