'Business of Bollywood cinema heading towards collapse'It could have been like another disappointing film, but for film-maker Shekhar Kapur. Movie buffs and journalists from Kerala, eagerly waiting for the 65th National Film Awards announcements were in for a total shock when jury members started reading out the list and did most of the talking in Hindi.
Like many, they forgot that it was the National Film Awards and not Bollywood awards. Keralites, and presumably people from other non-Hindi speaking states, had a tough time trying to make sense of the announcement. It was all the more difficult because, in most cases, the one making the announcement didn't know the name.
But the script had a twist when Shekhar Kapur, chairman of the jury, took the microphone. Kapur talked in a mix of Hindi and English and adopted a slow pace and even spelt out the difficult names for the journalists to tweet. For interludes, he said, "so, you want to tweet faster than the rest."
Reconsidering Indian films
Kapur said he had stopped making Indian films after his internationally acclaimed film 'Bandit Queen' as he felt that the quality of Hindi films were not up to the standards he had set for himself. But so thrilled he was after watching the films that came to the jury, that he is considering making an Indian film now.
He was also all praise for regional cinema, particularly Malayalam. He acknowledged that he was a big fan of Malayalam movies and watched lot of them himself.
“I saw one film in which the main character is a rapist, and then in another film he is a victim. The standard is completely different,” he said. “It took me 12 years to make 'Masoom.' I know how difficult it is to make a regional film. You have to beg for money,” he said.
Kapur found it difficult to pronounce the Malayalam film name 'Thondimothalum Driksaskshiyum' which bagged several awards. He said since the name was tough to pronounce the jury members used to call it 'the chain snatcher.'
Captain cool
Kapur made a boring read-out of names into an interactive one, by engaging with the journalists live. “Raise your hands if you know there is a language called Jasari,” he told the reporters before explaining it to them about, the Best Lakshadweep film, 'Sinjar.'
When a journalist asked him again for a name, he joked, “Sometimes I say it quickly because I don't know how to pronounce it.”
However, he did spell out the difficult words and names making things easy for the journalists tweeting hurriedly. But not without taking a dig at them.
He taunted the scribes, “You already got it leaked. I saw on twitter in the morning.”
The eager journos kept seeking clarifications, while he politely said “I m going as slow as I can, I will go even slower.”
“If there was no twitter you would have all just waited to get the press release,” he said.
