IFFI 2015
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"The Goa government had promised that it would create a separate venue for this festival. It has been 12 years now and still we have been depending on Inox"
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B Lingadevaru, director of the award winning Kannada film 'Naanu Avanalla...Avalu' (I am not a he, but she) has some major issues with the organising of the ongoing 46th International Film Festival of India.
“Firstly, there is a lack of audience at the film festival this year. Also, feature and non-feature films have been put together. How can you expect the audience to sit through three hours of film continuously?” he asks, adding that the whole thing is like a love marriage. “After marriage all problems arise and you forget the commitment. Similarly, the Goa government had promised that it would create a separate venue for this festival. It has been 12 years now and still we have been depending on Inox.”
Lingadevaru also added that hospitality level this year has gone down. “ The hotel that they have put some of us up in , I wouldn't even stay in it if I was coming on a personal visit,” he says. “ Also, the brochures for the festival came three or four days after the festival had begun when in reality they should have been given on the day of the opening ceremony itself. This is because the marriage is over. The central government has announced that Goa is the fixed venue, so now they are taking their own time in making decisions.”
His film, which deals with the transgender community, won two national awards for best actor and best makeup and is based on the book 'Living Smile Vidhya', an autobiography of a woman who felt trapped in the body of a man and underwent a gender change surgery. And for Lingadevaru, the making of this film transformed him a lot.
“Earlier I never used to talk to this community. When I used to see them at a traffic signal I used to close the car windows. I never saw them as human beings. However, after reading this book, my perception towards this community changed and that made me make this film,” he reveals. But the making of the film was no easy task. While he met Vidhya and took her bytes for the film, getting acquainted with the rest of the community was a challenge. “They are not ready to talk to people. Perhaps this is because earlier films did not focus on their problems or daily livelihood but rather ridiculed them. I needed to take someone's reference before they allowed me get to know them,” he admits, adding that even so it took him almost six years to make this film. “ I was determined that no matter how long it took me, I would be patient and make this film,” he says. The appreciation of the film from the audience however, took a while. “In the first week, despite us getting good reviews, it was difficult as not many people came to see the film. However, with the help of social media, we were able to reach the audience much easier and this helped a lot,” he says, adding that people are indeed ready to watch films on serious topics like these. “There is an audience definitely. It may not be as big as the kind that an Aamir Khan or Salman Khan film will attract, but the audience is there,” he believes.
