CHENNAI: Insider information in Tamil cinema is not a rarity. Keeping track of it is rarer still. But what is really lacking is an archive, albeit one that's as easy as checking out a page on Facebook. Two months ago, when a page in Tamil called Therinja Padam Theriyatha Vishayam (Known Film Unknown News) began posting about Tamil movies from the 1930s no one really took it seriously. After all, pages dedicated to 'breaking' cinema stories online are voluminous and easily available. Today, after over 300 posts have made the page enjoy a phenomenal following with 5,399 users clicking on the 'Like' button. "When we started the page, it was just something I did as a matter of interest," says Kumaragurubaran, a film journalist and media consultant who has worked with major publications, "With all the response it has generated, it has almost become like a full time job," he adds with pride. Indeed, he has had to rope in a team of four others to help moderate and manage the page part-time.There are two reasons why the page enjoys such good patronage - the first is that every single post has a small tidbit, long since forgotten after it appeared in a cinema page of some paper or magazine years ago, "At first we had to work hard to collect rare photos and little bits of news that we got when we began the task of archiving Tamil cine news through the ages," he credits other enthusiastic senior film reporters for having parted with their old photos, paper cutting and magazines to help form an archive. The second reason is that all of this is done in under 50 words, "This is the age of the short message," smiles Guru, "Absolutely anybody will have the attention span to read six lines, especially when there's some juicy fact at the end," he adds. Though all the posts are made in Tamil, the language is contemporary and has many English words just written casually in Tamil, for easy understanding.Forming this sort of an archive for 'lost' Tamil film news is something that's been a long time pending, he says, "Search for cinema news on Google from any other culture and its usually all there. But when it comes to Tamil cinema, most of the information from a decade ago is usually wrong or missing," he rues.And make no mistake about it, exactly 2392 people are talking about the page, according to Facebook.
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