Aliya Abreu
Filmmaker Priyadarshan on Monday said that the film scene in India was as bad as India’s performances at the Olympics because India’s best films were never selected to be sent to the Oscar’s.
The South Indian film director and chairman of the jury for feature films in the Indian Panorama selection said, “Our film scene is like our performance at the Olympics. Although our population is huge, we hardly get any medals. Our films are suffering because the best films are not being selected to be sent to the Oscar’s.” He said that it was this that led to so many controversies around films in India.
Priyadarshan was speaking at the Masterclass session ttitled “Master of multiple genres” at the Maquinez Palace, following the screening of his film “Sila Samayangalil at the 50th International Film Festival of India.”
The filmmaker also interacted with his fans and emerging filmmakers in the audience who had a host of questions for him. When asked what it was that kept him ticking (he has made close to a hundred films), even while many of his contemporaries had log stopped making films, Priyadarshan said that it was his willingness to keep himself updated with new technologies and current trends.
“Cinema is constantly changing. If I’m making a love scene, I will ask my assistants who are around my son’s age about the scene, and they’ll tell me “It is no longer like that. It is like this now.” So I learn from them and constantly update myself. This is the only reason I can think of, of why I’m still making films,” he said.
The director of films such as Kanchivaram and Hera Pheri also advised upcoming film-makers to turn a deaf ear to criticism. “Film criticism has become a business now, and very few critics are honest,” he said.
He pointed out that the flaw in film critiquing nowadays is that several critics are easily bought over. “If a filmmaker pays them, they’ll write good reviews about the film. But if a filmmaker does not pay them, the reviews are bad. This is especially on social media. It’s become a very dirty scene. This is why criticism does not bother me at all anymore,” Priyadarshan said.
He also said that film criticism in India is still dominated by caste politics and language politics. Some critics still base their reviews on which language the film was made in, and which caste the director and cast come from, he claimed.
