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In tune with harsh reality

The Cinema Club of Coimbatore aims to bring socially relevant movies to the audience, writes K. JESHI

This group of youngsters believes in meaningful cinema. And, taking such movies to a wider audience is their way of showing they care for society. In its first year of existence, the Cinema Club of Coimbatore (CCC), formed by people from different walks of life with a common interest in films, has already shown films to more than 1000 persons and this number is growing.

They bring classics, short-films and documentaries — Cinema Paradiso, Children of Heaven, Bicycle Thief, Motorcycle Diaries, Run Lola Run, Way Home, Aayeesha and Chellamma — to the common person. They also get them to discuss movies with renowned filmmakers and critics to understand films better and make them aware that a film is not just a commercial entertainer. "Commercial cinema is all about fantasy. There are still children living below poverty line yearning for simple things like a pencil, but do we get to see such realism in movies? We want to bridge the gap by making people watch movies, that portray life, emotions and relationships, the way it happens," says S. Gladies, a civil engineer by profession and co-ordinator of the club.

For visual communication graduates S. Kamalakannan and S. Ashok, it was a two-year stint with the film industry that set the ball rolling. "In commercial cinema, it is the comedy and songs that sell and distributors look only for such elements. So, we took on the responsibility to let the audience know about cinema and our club was formed," says Kamalakannan, the club's president. They plan to cover six schools (for students from class VI onwards) and six colleges in a year. Conducting film appreciation seminars for youngsters and film workshops that give an insight into script writing, photography and cinematography are also in the pipeline. "We want to target the younger generation, because they are open-minded and they are the future. When we screened Aayeesha to a group of students from a Government school, the response was overwhelming. Its director B. Sivakumar, who also won an international award for the film, was stumped by the questions raised by the students. The story is about a bright girl, hailing from a poor economic background, whose individuality is discouraged by her teachers. They chide her when she submits original homework instead of copying from the textbook. The students could easily relate to it," Gladies adds. Everyone watches cinema and its reach is phenomenal, they add. "Ask a youngster about a film anytime and he'll immediately recall the songs and the story. Why not utilise that space to make him understand reality? The Chennai we get to see in films is not what real Chennai is," Ashok adds.

S. Bhaskar, an ad filmmaker and a member of CCC, says that sometimes movies send out wrong messages. " We were shocked when we heard that a person succumbed to injuries after an accident, just because the public rushed him to a police station instead of a hospital, as shown in the movies. At the same time, there are people who watched movies like Anbe Sivam 20 times when told that it is a good movie. Our objective is to guide people to make such films a success," Bhaskar adds.

But, why screen Italian, German, Iranian and Korean movies? "Preparing the audience is important. Language is not a barrier, because in classics, it is the visuals that communicate and leave an impact," adds Kamalakannan.

Talking about the trend of copying ideas from international films, the members say, the filmmakers here miss out on copying fine emotions and the strong messages. What they fail to understand is that though the culture is different, family problems are the same everywhere. "The current spurt of don-based themes is based on the original Brazilian City of God. Most of the films are poor copies. The Hindi film Murder (copied from Unfaithful) was reduced to a mere skin show," Sekar adds.

The members say technology has made spreading awareness about films easier. "Now, movies are easily available in DVDs. And, film societies are coming up in a big way," they say.

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