The Hindu : National : ``Film industry plagued by lack of good screenwriters''

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 24, 2005

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National

``Film industry plagued by lack of good screenwriters''

Sudhish Kamath

The reality check came on the eve of IFFI inauguration

PHOTO: PTI

FINAL TOUCHES: A cutout in the making as part of the preparations for the IFFI 2005 that opens on Thursday in Panaji, Goa.

PANJIM: "Good stories do not make good movies. Good screenplays make good movies," said filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor, making a case for director John Mathew Mathan's crib that there are no good scripts available today.

The reality check came just a day before the start of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), at a two-day conference on "India — The Big Picture," organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here.

"Hollywood is able to transcend story-telling by stumping you with spectacles," said Sarfarosh director John Mathew. "We cannot compete with films that are made at $350 million budgets and create spectacles of that scale. We need writers who can appeal and reach out to different sections of society. We need minds to explore something we have not heard before. We need a body to encourage writers or we will just have filmmakers trying to write scripts."

With corporatisation of the Hindi film industry, finance is no longer the problem. The problem is content, as Goa Chief Minister Pratapsingh Raoji Rane said. "Where is the idealism of the past gone? It is time for introspection."

Need for film schools

"We need film schools to train screenwriters," Nagesh Kukunoor said. "You can't just have three film schools. You can't have a country producing 800 films and not have screenwriters."

Because of the dearth of talent, most films releasing today are blatant rip-offs from Hollywood, said Manmohan Shetty, managing director of Adlabs Films.

Illustrating the power of content, Uday Singh, managing director, Sony Pictures India, explained how Titanic, which released with just 11 prints, ran for a year in the country.

"For the show at Regal Cinema (Mumbai), there were people queuing up till Gateway of India. With players like Disney and Warner coming down to produce films here, the market will open up for different kinds of cinema targeted at different markets around the world."

Making universal films is the key, said Samina Peerzada, Pakistani actress and filmmaker. "We need to reach out and touch people's hearts and eliminate the fear that keeps you separated. We need cinema that touches the mind, spirit and soul, films that celebrate life and art. The films that we see today are primarily meant for cine-goers as a `boys night out'."

I fear India might be falling into the trap of mindless cinema, the same trap Pakistan fell into in the 80s in Gen. Zia's regime."

Nagesh Kukunoor said: "We make films for Indians and even most films released abroad are made for an Indian audience. We need to be able to go beyond that and reach out to the rest of the world, much like how filmmakers like Satyajit Ray did."

FDI in films

Afzal Amanullah, Director, IFFI, however, said that with the opening up of foreign direct investment in films and co-production agreements , Indian cinema was geared up for exciting times.

"We are seeing a mix of commercial and art cinema. We are seeing a revival of good cinema. We also have a very vibrant regional cinema."

Bobby Bedi, chairman, CII entertainment committee, said: "Being the second largest film industry in the world, our film industry has as much potential as the IT industry.

The Big Picture conference will be held as a precursor to the IFFI annually to introspect what kind of films we should be making and how to sell them internationally."

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