The Hindu : Kerala News : Call to resist fascist narrative

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Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007
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Call to resist fascist narrative

Staff Reporter

New thought: Senior journalist and film-maker Sashi Kumar speaking at a seminar at the IFFK in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.

THIRUVANANTHPURAM: Film-maker and chairman of the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, Sashi Kumar has said that “cinema of resistance has to resist the fascist narrative defined in Europeanised ideologies.”

Participating in a discussion on ‘Is cinema of resistance possible’ organised as part of the ongoing International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) here on Tuesday, Mr. Sashi Kumar said by this statement he was not negating the vibrant story-telling folk traditions across the globe. But the narrative films like the ones produced in the Hollywood and Bollywood, which entangled audience and made them supine before the screen, were at the end of the day fascist and should be resisted.

He said the resistance cinema should also resist the counterfeit parallel films that were being produced within the country. “We should resist the enemies within and outside,” he said.

Pointing out that the great movements like surrealism and neo-realism were no more present in the film field now, Mr Sashi Kumar said “this is indicative of the vegetative phase of cinema where even the brightest mind did not apply themselves to the process.”

According to him, the digital technology offered tremendous liberating potentials for the film-makers as it had cut the cost of film-making drastically.

Emphasising that the digital revolution could lead to the “pixilation of consciousness” he said the technology had ushered in a paradigm shift in the cinema world. Now the theory of centre-periphery was no more relevant, as it had become possible to have several centres and peripheries. There was now a need for coming out of the nostalgic fascination for the celluloid, and explore the prospects of digital technology to realise the objective of the cinema of resistance. There was also no need for being “nostalgic about the huge theatres, as the digital technology offered the possibilities of viewing the films in smaller audience.”

Reacting to this, film-maker Madusree Dutta said even though digital technology offered several possibilities to the practitioners of the cinema of resistance, the opportunities for reaching out to the audience would depend on the nature of the ownership of the beaming networks.

Film-maker Teresa Prata from Mozambique, whose film ‘Sleepwalking Land’ was screened at the festival, said the aspiring film-makers should resist losing themselves and acquire confidence in their capabilities and creativity. Elaborating on the rationale for adopting the surrealistic mode in her film, she said, “when you are making films during the time of war, you will have to be crazy little bit, or else you will go mad.”

Journalist N. Madhavankutty and film critic Vidyarthi Chatterjee participated in the discussion.

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