IFFI promoting Bollywood's synthetic culture: Kasarvalli
Panaji,Dec 1 (UNI) Noted Kannada filmmaker Girish Kasarvalli today accused the organisers of International Film Festival of India (IFFI) of promoting the synthetic culture of Bollywood.
"The festival in Goa has gone from bad to worse this year and there is resentment among the people in the South about Bollywood getting centre-stage at IFFI. We have great respect for Hindi cinema and not Bollywood. Everybody in India respects Hindi movies made by filmmakers like Guru Dutt. Sadly, the 37th IFFI has created a Bollywood versus rest of cinema divide in the country," Mr Kasarvalli told reporters here.
He did not mince words in criticising the local organisers for not giving due respect to filmmakers from different parts of the country. Creators of cinema should be given prominence and not the actors, he added.
He reiterated his demand for shifting the venue of IFFI out of Goa. "IFFI should be a cultural event and not a Bollywood Tamasha.
Let Goa have a separate festival of its own and include all Bollywood movies," he said.
Mr Kasarvalli said when the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG) officials came to Bangalore and got the IFFI web site inaugurated by him, he was told that he would be given a VIP treatment at the festival. "But I did not know that they would put me in the obituary. My friend filmmaker Gautam Ghose told me that IFFI has immortalised me," he said sarcastically referring the faux pas with his photograph appearing in late Kannada film icon Dr Rajkumar's homage page in the festival brochure.
Mr Kasarvalli's press conference was attended mostly by Bangalore-based media. A Kannada journalist pointed out that the notice of Mr Kasarvalli's press conference was not displayed at the media centre. The moderator from the PIB present at the press conference admitted that the announcement of the press interaction was not made properly. The Kannada journalists took offence stating that it was an insult to them. It was then Mr Kasarvalli gave vent to his anger.
He also expressed displeasure over the problems over his film 'Nayi Nerulu' at the INOX screen 2 yesterday. Mr Kasarvalli said the INOX authorities had stated there was problem with the print while Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF) blamed it on the projection. "Whatever may be the reason, there was no problem with the film. It had won awards at the Osian film festival in Delhi and also the Karnataka state award," he added.
Speaking about his film, Mr Kasarvalli said till recently it was a general belief that in the traditional societies, individuals accepted social order, even if they were stifling, without any kind of resistance. It is only of late, that realisation has dawned that there did exist resistance in such societies. But the paradigms were different. "When I re-read the novel "Nayi Neralu" by Dr S L Bhyrappa, I distinctly saw the possibility of interpreting the novel from this point of view. The novel narrates the story of three women viewing a particular situation from those different perspectives," he added.
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