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Mani Ratnam

Bollywood directors for using big stars to make cinema viable
22nd May 2007 09.00 IST
By Agencies

Good cinema must reach out to the people and film makers should not be averse to using a big cast to increase the viability of their movies, Bollywood film makers have said at a panel discussion held at Cannes.

Mani Ratnam , whose film Guru received a warm reception from a largely foreign audience, spoke of the need for good cinema to reach out to wider audience. "If that means using stars, so be it," he said.

Rituparno Ghosh too seemed to agree on the issue and supports the idea of using big stars in his movies, "If I can improve the profile of Bengali cinema by using established Mumbai stars, I do no disservice to cinema from my state."

The two directors were speaking at two India-specific panel discussions held at different locations on the Croisette, which sought to throw light on why Indian cinema suffers.

The first discussion, organised as part of the India Focus in the Tous les cinemas du monde section in the International Village Pantiero on Sunday, explored the complexities of Indian cinema in terms of its mind-boggling linguistic, cultural and stylistic diversity.

Panel of speakers included filmmakers Rituparno Ghosh, Rajkumar Hirani , Dr Biju and Bhavna Talwar.

"Language was a big barrier for regional filmmakers," Ghosh said, "because unless your film is in Hindi its appeal is limited to the state of its origin."

He, however, felt when a film like Ratnam's Roja is dubbed in Hindi, it loses a bit of character of the original version.

"But because it had a Hindi version, it achieved national success and changed the course of Indian cinema," Ghosh said.

Hirani, on his part, did not feel that language is as important as the sensibility of a filmmaker.

"If two directors make a film each on the same subject in Hindi, the two films can never be the same. The sensibility of the director is bound to impact that way each film shapes up," he said.

The other panel discussion, hosted in the seafront India Pavilion by the Independent Indian Filmmakers Worldwide, focused on why Indian films have been finding it difficult of late to break into the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival.

Veteran British film critic Derek Malcolm felt that the Cannes selectors were probably not looking hard enough at what India has to offer.

He, however, added that "India is its own worst enemy".

Malcolm argued that when an Indian film is selected by an international film festival, the government agencies in charge of coordination often send such a shoddy print that it puts the audience off Indian cinema for good.

"At the National Film Theatre in London, we had planned a retrospective of the parallel Indian cinema of the 1980s and chose 25 films. Only five prints arrived because the others couldn't be located. The festival got cancelled," he revealed.

Cameron Bailey, programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, granted that Indian filmmakers were second to none in terms of talent and craftsmanship.

"However, there seems to be rupture between the style, tone and taste of Indian cinema and what western festivals and audiences want," he lamented.

"Cinema from Hong Kong, South Korea, Iran and Taiwan are seen as cool in the West. Indian cinema, while being perceived as something exotic, doesn't enjoy similar status," Bailey said.

A large chunk of Indian films, he felt, still hadn't caught up with the modern and post-modern aesthetics of world cinema, he added.

Among the other speakers were American film programmers Hannah Fisher and Therese Hayes and Aroon Shivdasani of the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAAC) Film Festival that is held in New York annually.

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