What does entrepreneurship in the arts mean?

Paromita Vohra, filmmaker and founder of Parodevi Pictures, says, “Being entrepreneurial is about making something new, something that isn’t already there, and in the arts it’s not just about making a living. It’s also about broadening the field and creating an audience for your unique voice. What is the value that you are creating as an artistic entrepreneur? It’s gathering an audience that didn’t exist before.”

Vohra wears many hats at the same time. She is also a writer, a columnist, and the founder of Agents of Ishq, a digital media project that expands the space conversations around love, sex and desire.

On how she landed upon filmmaking as a career, Vohra says, “Choosing a career is so interesting. You make a choice on which road you can see and see a proposed ending. I am not sure if filmmaking was my choice in that sense. I suppose I took up documentary as I wasn’t seeing anything else in the mainstream that fit me. I was interested in a lot of things that didn’t have a name. Retrospectively, I realise that I was interested in ideas.”

Vohra says she was first introduced to documentaries while still a student of mass communication at Sophia College Polytechnic. “There were films from all over the world and the exposure made me realise that a documentary could be anything you want it to be, there was nothing to fit into. That was viable to me as a person. That’s the most important career decision: finding a place you can inhabit for a long time.”

She worked as an assistant for a few years, but that didn’t make for the best paymaster at that time. Since the industry had no jobs per se, freelance gigs were the route to the career.

“But, after a while learning starts to plateau. However, apprenticing is important. You can learn without stress. You watch others, learn skills, there’s no ego or anxiety. I recommend that to today’s generation. It’s an organic way to develop your own voice. Else, your voice becomes thin,” she adds.

While dabbling in other assignments–TV writing, magazine writing–was also a way to pay the bills, Vohra said the diverse avenues also kept various parts of her brain interested, feeding into filmmaking and vice versa.

Find your ‘why now’

Whether it’s for a VC or for the market, or just for yourself, it’s important to understand why your particular product/voice will be valued at this specific time.

Vohra says that the 1990s posed a unique turning point in India.

“Liberalisation changed India politically, socially and economically. Bombay–where the working class, single screen cinemas and trains ran together–was still not as suburbanised as it is today. The old conversations about politics were not resonating for the new generation and we were moving from an era of nation building to a more individualistic approach. There was an interconnectedness and these things needed new languages to express themselves in,” she adds.

Away from the perception that documentaries must only start conventional political conversations, Vohra says she wanted her films to make sense of the world around her and ask her audience to perhaps think about what their choices could mean.

Unlimited Girls (2002), which follows women and their notions of feminism, gave voice to an experiential feminism inside 10 years of liberalisation. “Women were living very different lives and there were not too many things around us that were giving voice to that space,” says Vohra about the film and the time as a mental space it was made in. “There was an audience that was waiting to be reflected on screen. I was writing about SRK, love and sex and desire at a time not too many were. People came to know that this is an audience–hence a market that exists, so more people began to do it. One was creating a businessplace for not just oneself but also expanding a larger field to make room for work like one’s own,” she adds.

Create a well researched mailing list

Taking the traditional route of sending her documentaries to various festivals, Vohra says the rejection of Unlimited Girls made her wonder if her film was a dud. “But, my first screening of the film was like a Cinderella movie. So many people loved it. Younger and older feminists. There was a man who said he’d seen it three times. So, I realised that if so many people liked my film, it must mean something.”

To market her 1998 film, A Woman’s Place, which she had co-directed along with three others, Vohra created her own mailing list. It was a tear-out mailer–single-page printouts that told you what the film was about and the languages it was available in. One could order a DVD by sending money via DD (demand draft), cash or cheque. The address would be shared on the mailer. “People mailed those back to me with cheques,” she adds.

But, how do you know whom to reach out to?

Vohra says her snail-mailing list came from asking different people in the Indie space. For instance, she reached out to Kali, an Indie publisher for women’s writing, and asked if they would share their mailing list. Similarly, with Jagori, a women’s resource centre. “I gathered this mailing list and sent out the letters. At that time, there were VHS tapes, no DVDs. This was 1998,” she says, adding that she sent out 2,000 letters and got around 400-500 responses asking for the tapes. That’s a hit rate of 25%, nearly. “That’s because all the people I had mailed were already subscribing to similar kinds of work.”

Play to your strengths

When you are in business for yourself, you are the one promoting both yourself and your work.

“You have to understand the size of your market and what you can do to further your work and expand your base. It takes a certain level of skill to do that. I have a friend who is an excellent salesperson. When he is pitching his films, he can work the room and I have nothing but admiration for him. But, I am not good at it. If I do that, I will look grotesque. I am not the prettiest girl in the hustling space, but I am the belle of the ball in the co-creation space.”

“What works for me,” she adds, “Is building communities and co-creating spaces

and environments for others alongside myself. These are practices that have worked for me. I am good at partnering with people who share my value systems. Those are my strengths and I am thriving. It’s been 30 years and this is the sustainable business model I have arrived at.”

Offer value, not just money

One of the sharpest points that Vohra makes is that people are willing to work on projects for reasons other than money. “But, once they are on board you must not hesitate to ask them for their 100%,” she says. Be transparent and clear from the start on what you can pay. And, if someone says no, there are no hard feelings.

“Work isn’t always about money. People do work for enjoyment, to show skills and artistry or even love for you. Giving them a space to do that is also a measure of value. Lots of people have come back saying ‘I loved working with AOI. I will never say no to you guys’.”

But, Vohra warns, “Don’t offer exposure instead of money. Only an SRK film can give you exposure. Honour their contribution. And, when you have the money pay people, especially those who worked for less in an earlier project.”

Ask for help

Setting up Agents of Ishq also meant the requirement of a different set of skills/knowledge, for instance, creating an organisation structure and hiring people accordingly. “Now, while a filmmaker you have the skills to create an organisation structure, as you do on your set, it’s a different iteration when it’s a day-to-day office. Here, everyone doesn’t have one common goal. It’s not one destination. I asked friends to help me with this. And one of the things they said was ‘hire for the role, not the person’. It was important to create roles within the organisation. It was a stabilising insight,” says Vohra.

She adds that it took time to conceptualise the roles. “Then I had to interview people and asked a friend to sit in on the interviews. Sometimes people want to help because they like what you do, and we have a genteel/middle class ethos on not asking for/accepting help. But, helping and asking for help are a form of exchange too.”