MUMBAI: Moser Baer Entertainment, which earlier shook up the DVD and VCD market in the country with its aggressive pricing strategy, is now looking to target the premium end of the market.

Moser Baer has bought from Palador Pictures the rights to distribute and sell 50 foreign language film titles in DVD format through its over 2,000 key retail outlets across the country.

The foreign films being released in DVD include some of the most awarded and critically acclaimed films. Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces ‘Seven Samurai’ & ‘Yojimbo’, ‘Infernal Affairs’ (which inspired Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award winner ‘Departed’), Wong-Kar Wai’s Cannes award winner ‘In The Mood for Love’, the cult Asian horror film ‘The Eye’, Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece ‘Wild Strawberries’, Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Dead Man’ starring a young Johnny Depp and the mother of all monster movies – the original ‘Godzilla’, being some noted names. The DVDs are each priced at Rs 399. Moser Baer will reportedly be paying an advance royalty to Palador Films for distributing their content, amounting to nearly 40 per cent of expected revenues.

Harish Dayani, chief executive – Entertainment Business, Moser Baer said, “At less than Rs 400, we will bring the premium home video titles to the Indian consumer through this tie up with Palador Pictures. Imagine you can now legally own 10 Bergman classics or 10 Kurosawas in less than Rs 4,000! We hope that this alliance with Palador is only the beginning and that we can collaborate with Palador for more than these 50 titles in the future.”

Says Gautam Shiknis, founder & managing director of Palador Pictures, “This alliance is the beginning of a World Cinema movement in India. The tie-up with Moser Baer Entertainment will now allow Indians from across the country to legally own a Bergman or Kurosawa or any of the other masters and be suitably awed by their art, craft and wizardry over the cinematic medium. I sincerely hope this rejuvenates a cult kind of movement for World Cinema and foreign films in smaller cities in addition to the metros.”

Palador Pictures has invested over $ 4 million (Rs 160 million) to acquire legal rights to around 1,000 foreign language film titles in its World Cinema category. The Palador catalogue boasts of award-winning foreign film classics directed by the masters of yesteryears and the current crop of mavericks: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Luc Godard, Froncois Trauffat, Abbas Kiarostami, David Lynch and many more. The Palador collection covers all genres and eras and is probably the single largest collection of quality films in the world.