‘Malayalam actors star in anti-women films’

Panaji: Malayalam film stars choose to constantly work in films which have ‘anti-women’ and ‘anti-social’ content, and dialogues fraught with double entendres—they are only worried about their films entering the Rs 100 crore-club and not bothered about their social responsibility, said national award winning Kerala filmmaker Bijukumar Damodaran at the International Film Festival of India (

Iffi

) on Monday. He also expressed appreciation for Hindi film actor Akshay Kumar for working on films that have a social message.

“Whatever it is, I appreciate Akshay Kumar— what a variety of subjects he is working on. In big budget Malayalam films, they have so many ‘double meaning’ dialogues. The film content is so anti-women, anti-social. And these stars are not doing only a single film, but doing film after film of such content. And each film they do is worse than the previous one,” said Damodaran, during an interaction at Iffi. “They have a social responsibility. It is all about entering the Rs 100 crore-club and they want to enter the Rs 200 crore club with their next film,” he remarked.

He said that those in the film industry should be ‘honest and passionate towards humanity’. Damodaran has received the national film award three times and is considered one of the most important contemporary voices in Indian cinema. “In Kerala, I am ashamed to say that it is ‘criminal’ to make an art-house film, a meaningful film,” added Damodaran.

He said that television channels in Kerala reject films outright if they have won honours like the national award, as these films are not considered saleable content for television.

“If we win an award, TV channels say ‘oh, it is an award-winning film, we don’t want it’. That is why filmmakers are not coming forward to make films with a message. And then, we talk about social responsibility,” he said.

Marathi filmmaker Addinath Kothare said filmmakers should be responsible for the content of their films, as there are many instances where people in real life have imitated reel life, and gone to the extent of committing crimes.