The Hindu : Kerala News : Films in the time of festivals

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Friday, Apr 13, 2007
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Kerala

Films in the time of festivals

Before the arrival of satellite television channels and much before Malayalis began to prefer to watch the latest films on pirated VCDs, Onam and Vishu used to mean festival time for films too.

"When I was studying in school and college, I used to look forward to Onam and Vishu for primarily two reasons - the special issues of popular Malayalam magazines and the films," recalls director Sathyan Anthikkad, who is delighted that his Vishu release `Vinodayathra' is being well received. "Things have changed a lot since then."

K.M. Prabhath, a Kozhikode-based film distributor who has been in the business for the last 30 years, agrees with Mr. Sathyan on that point. "The number of Malayalam films for Onam and Vishu has decreased and now the cinema owners are forced to screen Tamil and Hindi films during these festivals," he says.

Those were the days when films formed an essential part of the festivals. The entire family would go to cinemas after the feast in the afternoon. These days they would rather watch the films aired on the numerous channels.

"Or they would watch pirated VCDs," adds actor Mukesh. "Now because of all these police raids and cases of late, more people are coming to watch films in cinemas."

Producer P.V. Gangadharan too is hopeful. "There has already been a slight increase in the number of films being made," he says. "You cannot of course compare that with the time when we had 100-120 films a year. Those days a lot more big films used to be produced with Onam and Vishu in mind and the producers could hope for decent returns for their films."

This year there are five Vishu releases - `Big B,' `Chotta Mumbai,' `Vinodayathra,' `Panthayakozhi' and `Athishayan'. "Actually I had planned `Vinodayathra' as a Christmas release, but my script was not ready and I did not want to rush my film," reveals Mr. Sathyan. "You cannot expect so many big movies getting released at the same time any longer, because the production costs of Malayalam films have risen drastically.

P. K. AJITH KUMAR

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