Piracy, bad halls, poor story line killing Assamese cinema

Guwahati, Sep 19: Piracy, bad cinema halls and poor story-line besides lack of marketing skills have been billed as the few major reasons for the ongoing crisis of the Assamese film industry.

Unable to make an honourable living, the film fraternity of Asom assembled in a seminar on Film, Media&Marketing today and concluded these were some of the reason for the doom.

The Seminar was organised by 'Samaroh' in collaboration with Gauhati Cine Club and was presided over by former DGP Harekrishna Deka, Commissioner of Asom Government Mrinal Kr Barua, film distributor C S Naryanan, noted film maker Munin Barua and film personality Nipon Goswami.

At the conference, for the first time the cinema halls owners were accused of not maintaining and updating the halls. ''The ambience is a big problem. You want hygienic and clean cinema halls,'' said Mr Deka. He added that the number of cinema halls were dwindling every day thereby, encouraging piracy.

The renowned film producer and director D S Naryanan said promotion of good but smaller cinema halls will encourage people again towards the cinema halls provided Assamese films have good story line.

''Unfortunately we have gone back to 1930s when the first Assamese film Joymoti was made'' said Mr Nipon Goswmi, the king of Assamese Cinema for over four decades.

The year 2002 was boom time for Assamese film industry, but crises crept in slowly. The regional filmdom, which witnessed commercial success with a number of productions, ran with the crisis of quality throughout the year. Stories that deal with cheap love and romance, immature technical touch and lack of finer directorial treatment have subsequently reduced the interest of serious film buff of the state towards the local movies. The six-decade-old Assamese film industry, which started its voyage with Joymati by Rupkonwar Jyoti Prasad Agarwala in the forties, have shaped impressive number of viewers today, but the quality graph of productions had already started declining.

As the industry is sinking, money is also drying up and even ace director like Munin Barua is also not getting films for the past two years despite successive hits.

Speaking on the occasion Commissioner Mrinal Barua informed that more than Rs 15 crores are coming as per the Asom Accord for the upgradation of Jyoti Chitrabon film studio and the Film Institute.

''But it will not be possible to expect advance from Asom government. That is not possible,'' he said in reply to the oft spoken statements that government should intervene into the whole process.

As cinema halls are being brought down for other businesses, Assamese cinema is facing real crisis with money completely drying up.

''It is true that the quality of cinema may have gone down in the recent past after such high dozes of good film in eighties and nineties but Assam needs all kind of cinema for the sheer growth of the film industry,'' he said.

UNI