Dastur’s digital discoveries

"Youngsters today are not looking for gyan (unsolicited advice),” says Cyrus Dastur, founder and chief executive officer of Shamiana Short Films (SSF), Shamiana Education and Shamiana Cine Café. The 37-year-old short films curator acquires the short films from unusual places like the Antarctica, Somalia, Iceland over and above countries in Europe, Asia and the US and provides a platform to showcase them. "It’s an extremely innovative concept and we are the largest players in Asia with a physical outreach across over 20 cities and over 200 campuses,” including several Indian Institutes of Management and Indian Institutes of Technology as well as college festivals, he asserts over coffee on September 10, 2015. SSF also projects two or three short films in selected restaurants for half an hour on pre-determined days which draw large crowds. "People are not interested in anything except entertainment which connects with them… Not boring documentaries,” Dastur continues.

Cyrus Dastur

Cyrus Dastur on stage with Tom Alter

View of the new Cine Café

"The (film) curation business can no longer be ignored. It is the voice of individual representatives, or a recounting,” or personality driven the entrepreneur states. Content curation is defined as the act of discovering, gathering and presenting digital matter that surrounds specific themes — all represented in 10 to 25 minutes. As he quotes figures, one realizes the short film market has over 500 million followers globally. The businessperson’s high is in showcasing others’ films from an international market, some of which have also been nominated for the Oscar. A short film is said to be up to half hour for festivals – some are a mere 90 seconds, the net specifies. He intends to make such movies available online at some point.
"It’s not a cut-copy-paste formula; there is no other (such venture) in India,” he claims. He calls it "a space, a community of free thinking people.” Shamiana holds the Asian screening rights for the Oscar nominated short of 2013, Asad which also got the 2012 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, he reveals.
Dastur, who started his venture Shamiana in 2008, is interested in spreading his network to other Indian cities. Plans are also afoot to go international. They have recently started operations in Melbourne, Australia and Hong Kong, his email signature of October 7, 2015 declares. The company also comprises Shamiana Education, which offers an eight to 10-week course to school and college students to learn about various aspects of cinema. His vision is to teach cinematography to a wide circle of interested people — irrespective of age. A Cine Café started early 2014 in Baroda. The innovator proclaims it as "The world’s first café themed around short films.” Dastur would like to replicate this concept in other parts of the country in the future.
Shamiana should be able "to create an international community of short film makers and lovers where people from all around the world can connect and collaborate on multiple things,” he remarks. The global network would be strictly a platform for short films and will not promote ideas or people. It will have no face connected to it. The sole criterion is objectivity and entertainment. "A film is selected purely on merit and no personal bias or promotion,” he elaborates.
When Dastur selected the nomenclature Shamiana, he wanted a name which did not reveal the business genre. "Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon, etc, you don’t know the nature of their business on hearing the name,” he notes. The name Shamiana was derived from the coffee shop at the Taj Mahal Hotel which he frequented as a lad.
He caters to an "aspirational India,” but adds he is "not selling a dream.” True democratization is when anyone believes "my story will be heard. My film can be seen by thousands, giving opportunity, giving recognition as an artist… They believe if he can, why can’t I? I started with zero resources, not from the film world; I’m actually a law person.”
His passion germinated in its first expression in theater at the Palm Beach School, then again at H. R. College. He completed his Masters in law at the Bombay University after graduating from Government Law College (GLC). The theater buff got the best actor prize for the best play of Harold Pinter The Home-coming at an inter-collegiate competition when at GLC.
The bachelor’s true romance was with theater, he proclaims. Mother Dhun was supportive of his pursuit but always "wondering.” Her concerns were partially allayed when she saw his involvement with Two Plus Productions and Mocha Film Club, both groups now defunct. She soon realized her son would not join the family export business of industrial chemicals which his late father Framroz had started. Older brother Zubin, however, is in the family business and may possibly enthuse his young son Farhan to join one day.
Cyrus considers industrialist J. R. D. Tata as his role model. He recounts when Tata was awarded the Bharat Ratna, Dhun wrote to Tata. She received a gracious response from the mogul, making a lasting impression on Cyrus. "We don’t see good people around us. Everyone wants to get rich quickly — by hook or by crook. There is such a scarcity of heroes and idols… It is myopic to consider money as a reason to gain meteoric rise. We must have right idols and lionize them.” Cyrus admires Charlie Chaplin as a communicator and as "brilliant; a writer, actor, director.” Dev Anand is well regarded by him for his "impeccable energy till his dying day at the age of 89.”
Dastur has a fascination and facility with languages, he admits, and converses in English, Hindi, Guajarati, German and Urdu. "I was in a play on Mirza Ghalib and the romance with Urdu started there.”

The Dastur family (from l): Framroz, Ervad Zubin, Cyrus and Dhun