Huddersfield Filmmaker awarded NESTA grant

Documentary filmmaker, Gopal Dutta and partner Nav Kandola, have been granted a £35,000 NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) award to set up a broadband TV channel, 'Brown TV', with a modern and cutting-edge schedule, primarily aimed at a young South Asian market.

Gopal Dutta, who has grown up in Huddersfield, achieved the award through NESTA's Creative Pioneer Programme and the funding will enable Gopal and Nav to access and provide for the entertainment needs of urban second and third generation South Asians who live across the globe; television that is "underground, boundary breaking, creative and informative..."

Brought up in Huddersfield by his teacher mother and artist father, Gopal fondly remembers his childhood as a time for films.  "I don't know anyone who has watched more films than me," Gopal claims.  After studying politics at Cambridge University, Gopal returned to his West-Yorkshire home town ready to embark on his film-making dream.

After making a few videos, Gopal met Nav who already had his own business, 'Hive Central' making documentaries about the local area.  So began a relationship of teacher and student:

"I assisted him on everything and he taught me everything I know," says Gopal.

That relationship has now progressed to one of business partners.  By the time the opportunity to apply for a NESTA award came up, Nav had already been talking about setting up a TV Channel and both he and Gopal began to recognise a crucial gap in the market.

According to Gopal, "We found that most of the satellite channels concentrate on programmes made for older first generation migrants and have been slow to adapt to the changing lifestyles of the second and third generation audiences like Nav and myself".

Throughout this transition from student to professional filmmaker, Gopal has been assisted and advised by CIDA and, in particular, CIDA's Chief Executive, Anamaria Wills.

"The help I've had from Anamaria and CIDA has been absolutely essential in me getting the NESTA award. No questions about that.  Fairly early on in the application process, I was quite disheartened by the whole ordeal, and was considering not even applying....It was good to go from this situation straight into a meeting with Anamaria where she told me that I absolutely had to apply."

"I'm quite badly organised so it's good that someone else is," says Gopal.  "From the very outset, Anamaria has been really supportive of the idea, and has always been willing to have hastily organised meetings with me, to give me feedback on the proposals and business plans that I've had to put together."

"Anamaria and CIDA have been a great help, and hopefully the relationship will continue."

Since receiving the award, Gopal and Nav have been spending a lot of time researching their target market audience and making plans for the next stages of their business plan.

"Where six months ago I might have gone to a meeting and asked that person for work, now they're more likely to be asking me for work," says Gopal; "it's exciting, I can't believe how quickly things have changed."

SOURCE: NESTA