President stresses need to focus on India's regional cinema

New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said that the future of Indian cinema is in adapting "digital ecosystem" driven by the youth of the country. He also noted that it is time to take regional cinema onto a global platform.

"Cinema is country's soft power. It holds international ties and navigates global horizons with it. With world's youngest democracy and growing smartphone market, our country will soon embrace a complete digital ecosystem, which would help us connect to a larger number of consenting geographical and cultural radius," Mukherjee said at the 62nd National Film Awards ceremony held at Vigyan Bhawan here.

Congratulating the recipients of the award, Mukherjee emphasised on the need to promote regional cinema.

"Mainstream Hindi cinema is recognised internationally, we should focus to project our regional cinema now, highlight that the content is equally impressive and deserve global attention," he said.

Writer-director Chaitanya Tamhane and singer Uttara Unnikrishanan, who received the National Film Award in the Best Feature Film category for movie "Court" and Best Playback Female Singer award for the song "Azhagu" from Tamil movie "Saivam" respectively, got a special mention by the president.

"The winner of Best Feature Film, Chaitanya Tamhane is 27 years old and his film 'Court' has created voice in international film festivals. I'm also delighted for Uttara Unnikrishanan, who is 10 years old. The creativity amongst our youth is a promise for the future. It reassures us that we will continue to produce not just in number, but in the quality as well," Mukherjee said.

He also appreciated the digitisation of film screens, saying they "have allowed distributors to release films simultaneously across multiple screens" which has turned out to be a profitable setting.

"We need to reinforce this trend by building more screens," he said.

The president, who looked elegant in a black bandhgala suit, also pointed out the role of social media in marketing of a film.

"Promotion and marketing of films have now taken on a new avatar with substantial marketing happening on social media - news of a good film now spreads quicker on Twitter than by word of mouth," he said.