the goan I network
PANAJI
Priyadarshan Nair, Chairman of the feature film jury for the Indian Panorama on Thursday said that only the best films were chosen for the Indian Panorama section, and the focus was not on the language of the film.
Nair was answering a question at a press conference about the controversy about no Konkani film being selected for the Indian panorama section at the 50th IFFI.
“This is nothing against Konkani films. We have to select 20 films. Those who have made better films actually stand a better chance to be in the selection,” Nair said adding, “We can’t ignore someone’s good work just to make some sort of sacrifice to include certain languages. Because this is Indian cinema - if you look at the Karnataka section, generally they get lots of exposure but this year, the South films have got less traction than Bengali or Marathi films.”
Nair explained that the twelve member jury looks at what is the most impressive work done while selecting the films, and that language does not play a role at all in the selection. “We didn’t decide on language and what should be the projection we should give to any certain language. The language preference is only given to certain rare languages like tribal languages,” he said.
Nair also added that every selection kicks up a controversy, as someone or the other is excluded. “Fortunately we didn’t get much of it after choosing the films for the Indian Panorama section. We selected the best and they have done a great job,” the film director from South India said.
He also expressed concern about the deterioration of the regional films being produced. “At least 50% of the films we watched, when they were good in content, they were bad in quality, and when they were good in quality, they were bad in content. There has been a huge deterioration in the realistic films from India,” he lamented.
The thirteen member jury panel to select the films for the feature films Indian Panorama section selected 27 films of 314 that they watched. It was a 30 day process and they were supposed to select around 20 films, Nair explained. The jury consisted of film-makers from all across the country.
When the selection was announced, there was a huge row in Goa over there being no Konkani language film selected in the Indian Panorama, with political parties asking what was the benefit of IFFI to Goa if Konkani films were not getting traction.
The ESG then resolved the matter by including a special section only for Konkani films called, “The Goan Story: a Konkani film package.” Seven Konkani filsm are being screened in this section.
