The Hindu : Kerala News : Baffling tastes of Malayali film buffs

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Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala

Baffling tastes of Malayali film buffs

T. Ramavarman

Yes to exotic works, no to native creations

Good response to serious films at festivals
Lukewarm response to serious films at cinemas

THIRUVANANTHPUAM: In recent years, audience response to serious cinema screened at film festivals across the State has been phenomenal. But this fervour and excitement are absent in theatres when works of Malayalam directors who strive to trek an unconventional path are screened.

Many filmmakers, artistes and activists attending the ongoing International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) here are baffled by this dichotomy.

Nearly 9,000 film buffs have been issued passes for the festival being held in eight venues. Most theatres screen films to a packed audience. The organisers had to disappoint many film fans, as more passes could not be issued for want of space.

This is true even of festivals of a smaller scale held elsewhere — for instance in Thrissur and Kozhikode. The number of film festivals held in the State has also risen.

Conditioned response

“Our audience is not getting a proper education on good cinema. On the other side, they (the audience) are getting a negative education on cinema through television channels, which select films available at low cost for telecasting. And watching three or four films telecast every day by the channels, the audience get conditioned to enjoying only such films,” Adoor Gopalakrishnan, filmmaker, told The Hindu here.

Pointing out that a genuine work of art should give an insight into the social reality, Mr. Gopalakrishnan said the audience somehow appeared to be keen on escaping from reality, rather than confronting it. That was why trash movies became popular. The audience would accept even matinee idols only if they appeared in their stereotyped format and not as a character in a serious cinema. K.G. George, director, said, “We (Keralites) may be keen to watch a harsh reality prevailing in some other country through a film from that region. But we become nervous when our reality is portrayed on the screen.”

P.T. Kunjumuhammed, director, said the education system, with its colonial legacy, had played a crucial role in making Keralites extremely conservative in their deeper levels of consciousness and sensibilities, though they appeared to be progressive outwardly. They would talk high about serious cinema publicly and go to theatres with their families to watch trash commercial movies.

“They suffer from an inferiority complex even about their mother tongue, and are timid in their imaginations. Our politics, media, cinema and other art forms are not free from these influences. That is why we are not getting powerful cinema or a good audience. I am making this as a self-critical statement,” he said.

Double standard

T.V. Chandran, filmmaker, was critical of the “double standard” of Keralites in their approach to culture. Most of the film buffs in other regions such as Tamil Nadu would go only for action-packed commercial movies, and they were indifferent to the happenings in serious cinema. But Keralites would keep track of even the miniscule developments in the world of serious cinema, and yet flock to theatres where crass commercial movies were screened.

Emphasising that space for serious cinema is shrinking in Malayalam, Rajiv, director, said what had surprised him was that opportunities for such films were growing in Mumbai, once the dubbed as the headquarters of commercial cinema. There were growing opportunities for making meaningful films in Hindi. They (Hindi film producers) wanted serious filmmakers from regional languages to make such films in Hindi.

Lenin Rajendran, director, said it was decadence of politics that had led to the degeneration of art forms, including cinema, in Kerala.

Echoing similar views, Kamal, director, said since society was the source of the creative talents of an artiste, the decadence in society would influence works of art.

“All the world classics portray the intense socio-political realities prevailing in their countries, in some form or the other. But what is there to project in our politics, unless you want to be partisan in a narrow sense.”

Shyamaprasad, director, said it was important to concede that “we did not have a remarkable production even among the category of serious cinema in the past ten to 15 years. Most of them were repeating what they had been saying before.”

Priyanandanan, young filmmaker, said the budgetary constraints imposed major blocks in creative film experiments. This put directors in an auto-censoring mode.

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