Pay-per-view app My CinemaHall is organising My SHORTS, a Bengali short film festival which will screen selected movies during Durga Puja and the revenue generated from each film will be shared with the filmmaker. Launched in April, My CinemaHall is a startup which was developed in Kolkata and has achieved more than 12,000 downloads in a span of four months, screening over 100 feature films, short films and plays.

At a time when cinema halls across the country remain closed amid the coronavirus pandemic, this app-based OTT platform provides filmmakers a space to showcase their work to the viewers. According to Kalyanmoy Chatterjee, managing director of My CinemaHall, the festival opens up opportunities for budding filmmakers to showcase their talent. “We have already witnessed huge enthusiasm among filmmakers in terms of participation,” he said in a statement.

The platform already caters to English, Hindi, Assamese, Odiya and Kannada language films, and Chatterjee said they have plans to roll out such short film festivals in “other regional languages soon”. Yaatrik Chakraborty, one of the founder members of My CinemaHall who also conceptualised the festival, said My SHORTS has a “transparent process of selection”.

“There are many short-film-festivals that you see in the social media. I feel they are neither qualified nor have a transparent process of selection. The participants do not even know if their film will ever be screened. “In My SHORTS, we have a transparent process of selection, the credentials of the judges are unquestionable, and we are giving the filmmakers an opportunity to earn money from the screening,” added Chakraborty. The festival’s jury panel has director-actor Aparna Sen as chairperson and editor Arghyakamal Mitra, director Anik Datta, cinematographer Avik Mukhopadhyay and actor-theatre personality Sohag Sen as members.