Exploring the prosperous union of New Malayalam Cinema and OTT platforms, this chapter scrutinises the circumstances under which the former thrived on OTTs during the COVID-19 pandemic. It delves into Malayalee market trends, the content diversification incited by OTTs, and the expansion of New Malayalam Cinema's market. As it explores changing audience consumption patterns and the prospects of India's OTT landscape, it particularly accentuates Malayalam regional cinema. By providing examples of films that debuted on OTT platforms, such as C U Soon and Joji, the chapter offers an in-depth analysis, highlighting the success of this symbiotic relationship.
TopIntroduction
The Over-the-top (OTT) media services, specifically the subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services, serve as a reserve for the spontaneous requirements of media and entertainment. The function of supply met by the plethora of streaming platforms for the demand created by the evolving nature of the audiences and their new viewing practices has become an increasingly sought-after field of academic enquiry in recent years (VS, 2022). The introduction of ‘new cinemas’ from the regional film industries, tapping into the pan-Indian film market due to the advancement of digital technology and its reach, has established a cause-and-effect relationship between OTT platforms and the filmic content made available for subscription-based viewership.
In the case of post-2010s, New Malayalam cinema, often memorialised for its ‘generational shift’, the proliferation of video services on OTT platforms alongside its development marks a combination of disruptions that serve as interventions in the markets for audiovisual content on a global scale (Fitzgerald, 2019). This also has had a direct relation to the exponential rise in regional cinemas in India due to the boost provided by OTT media as they have conquered new territories and expanded beyond their language markets by claiming a share of popular culture.1
Considering the COVID-19-induced nationwide lockdown in India as a watershed moment that marked the heightened visibility of the OTT media service in the Indian mediascape (Nayak & Biswal, 2021; Srivastav & Rai, 2021) and its correlation with the advances that New Malayalam cinema as the alternate popular gives visibility to overlaps and the essay seizes this opportunity to engage with the subject matter academically. These are visible in the newer and contemporary themes that came to light in the narratives (from the 2010s onwards and seen an accelerated growth rate during the pandemic) and in the kind of stylistic endeavours that have surfaced. Malayalam films available on OTT platforms necessitate a comprehensive examination of their themes, style and the revised dimensions of production, elucidating the platforms’ transformative impact on filmmakers’ creative agency, the filmmaking landscape and the ever-evolving dynamics between OTT media and New Malayalam Cinema.
The steady movement towards rural locations contradicts how this contemporary shift has been termed a new ‘generational’ shift.2 It becomes post-Travancore in its treatment and retirement from the established Capital ‘M’ star-studded Malayalam film industry.3 The generational shift of New Malayalam cinema, as reported by media, works on two levels: (1) it reflects upon the new crop of directors, which includes Dileesh Pothan, Mahesh C. Narayanan, Lijo Jose Pellissery, Zakariya Mohammed, Aashiq Abu, to name a few, and (2) the ‘modern’ nature themes that are explicitly highlighted within urban geographies.
Limiting the potential of New Malayalam cinema solely by understanding it as a generational shift would warrant the engagement in an incomplete exercise of understanding the motive of this project and essentialising it to a grand narrative of the loss of traditional structures of the established Malayalam cinema. Films in New Malayalam cinema have narrativised rural spaces, as seen in films such as Angamaly Diaries (2017), Ee. Ma. Yau (2018) and Jallikattu (2019) by Lijo Jose Pellissery, Kammattipadam (2018) by Rajeev Ravi, Kumbhlangi Nights (2019) and Halal Love Story (2020) by Zakariya Mohammed. “For the longest time, rural landscapes in Malayalam cinema have been sites of feudal revivalism and nostalgia, with stories often told exclusively from the perspectives of elite upper-caste feudal landlord figures” (P T, 2020). The capability of New Malayalam cinema beyond the generational shift, a shift that attempts to draw one’s attention solely to a defamatory manner of a sudden jolting from the rural and traditional sensibilities of Kerala state, has to be evaluated as not limited to their intimate relationship to city spaces but also a construction of a region that retains its socio-politico-religious markers, steering away from the homogenous (P T, 2020).