Word: pinki
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Didn't get around to seeing all last year's Oscar winners? Never mind, one of them may come to you, free, on DVD. In an unusual marketing move, the producers of Smile Pinki, which won the Oscar in February for Best Short Documentary, are giving away the movie to anyone who asks - and to some who don't. Ads touting the offer will run in 125 major papers on Sept. 9, and on Oct. 21 the DVD will be delivered with copies of USA Today and other Gannett papers to subscribers in affluent zip codes...
There's a teensy catch, of course. Although the movie makes no mention of it, it was entirely financed (to the tune of about $250,000) by Smile Train, an organization that seeks to fix cleft palates in children from developing countries. Smile Pinki follows the story of two of those children, Pinki and Ghutaru, from remote villages in India to a hospital in the city, to have their cleft palates fixed and their futures profoundly altered. (Children with cleft palates are often ostracized and find it difficult to get an education or to subsequently find a good...
...equally high hopes for Smile Pinki. He notes that if just 1 in 100 people who order the DVD decide to become donors, it will have a vastly better success rate than most direct-mail programs. "Most charities would be horrified by all of this," he admits. "If you went to most boards and said you wanted to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a documentary that doesn't even mention the name of the charity, they'd be appalled. But this was the best $250,00 any charity ever spent...
India has clearly been the flavor of this Oscar season. While Slumdog Millionaire predictably won eight of the 10 golden statuettes it was in the running for - including the Best Picture - even the low-profile Smile Pinki, a documentary about a girl from a village in India with a cleft lip, surprised with its win in the Short Documentary category. Indian TV anchors have been wildly ecstatic, but reactions outside newsroom are decidedly mixed. Some feel happy for Slumdog's Indian connection - especially for the awards for A.R. Rahman (best original score and for theme song Jai Ho) and Resul...
...film put together would not have garnered an Oscar nomination. "If you take out the director and producer, it wouldn't even have got a nomination. This film won due to all the Danny Boyle hype." Harjot Singh, an IT expert with a Noida-based BPO, adds: "Smile Pinki, which won in the Best Short Documentary category, is also made by a U.S.-based filmmaker. I'm happy this has been India's season at the Oscars, but it is certainly not Indian cinema's." (See the 10 Indian films to treasure...