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Cannes is all about stargazing on the red carpet and 100 years of Indian cinema has turned into 100 years of Bollywood, say Onir & Co. There's money for a 4 crore starry party at Cannes, but back home, there aren't many theatres for our festival-hopping films. onir lashes out at the double standards in India
Bollywood celebs may be preening on the Cannes red carpet, but back home, many festival films never get a proper release. Onir, who was instrumental in starting Save Indie Films at Cannes last year, lashes out against the culture of celeb worship, the travails of indie filmmakers and how 100 years of Indian cinema is turning into 100 years of Bollywood. Excerpts:
Bollywood celebs may be preening on the Cannes red carpet, but back home, many festival films never get a proper release. Onir, who was instrumental in starting Save Indie Films at Cannes last year, lashes out against the culture of celeb worship, the travails of indie filmmakers and how 100 years of Indian cinema is turning into 100 years of Bollywood. Excerpts:
Anyone can go to the market in Cannes and claim to have walked the red carpet. Big deal! It's a joke. Cannes, for most, is a holiday destination. Why should people from the Hindi film industry complain, when their business focuses on India and NRIs? Cannes is just an add-on for them. People who get affected are those who know Cannes was once considered a sacred space for good cinema. Today, Indian tourism is huge. Suddenly Bollywood is becoming the centrepoint, not Indian cinema. If a Marathi actress wins a National Award, no one will know her name. The focus will be on Parineeti Chopra, who gets a special mention. People are talking about Mallika Sherawat... we are proud that she is wearing nice clothes, but what is her contribution to Indian cinema? Has anyone seen the photograph of Ritesh Batra, whose Lunch Box is the most talked about Indian film at Cannes this year? No one knows what other films have gone to the festival barring Bombay Talkies, which boasts of directors like Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Anurag Kashyap. At the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, where 100 years of Indian cinema was celebrated, a dance number was choreographed by Saroj Khan. Neither Satyajit Ray nor Adoor Gopalakrishnan get a 10-second representation. I have nothing against the film, but Bombay Talkies has a song in the end featuring actors only from the Hindi industry. Sorry, it's 100 years of Indian cinema, not 100 years of Bollywood. Even the Tamil industry is huge, so why was it that a Kamal Haasan or a Rajinikanth were not part of the dance?
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Ganesh Kartikeya
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