360 degrees in 365 days

With the Hindi flicks falling likeninepins, we are suddenly talking about the great revival of Bangla cinema.Tollygunge is in the news for all the right reasons – Aishwarya and Tabushooting Bengali films and host of others, including Mumbai''s current heartthrobVivek Oberoi expressing his desire to work in Kolkata: Yash Chopra meeting thechief minister and talking about investing; multinational banks offering funds;corporates like Columbia Tristar taking up distribution of Bengali movies, etc.Etc.We should be happy, we should be proud and should be looking forwardto a great year ahead. Bangla films should be running to packed houses with longqueues outside halls like Priya and Mitra, with the mashimas, pishimas and thekakimas patronizing Bangla films once more. 2002 had been good. 2003 promises tobe even better.Elite halls of the city have a long list of Bengali filmsfor the next year. We have Buddhadeb Dasgupta''s Mando Meyer Upakhyan, GautamGhose''s Abar Aranye, Rituparno Ghosh''s Chokher Bali, national award winner UrmiChakraborty''s Hemanter Pakhi, Abhijit Choudhury''s Patal Ghar, and my NilNirjane. We know that the greatest box-office success in recent times likeHaranath Chakraborty is already shooting his latest film with new-found starJit, shooting of Moloy Bhattacharya''s film Tin Ekke Tin is nearing completionand Bratya Winkle Twinkle Basu''s debut film has completed shooting. So 2003 willbe a great year. Or will it?Rationally speaking, I don''t yet see any greatrevival. We still have four posters of Prasenjit in six billboards, we stilltalk about the legacy of Satyajit Ray and we still churn out the same kind ofmovies – mainstream, arty or middle of the road.And mediocre movies.Our films like Saathi run jubilee, yet the intelligentsia prefers to ignorethem. Arty and middle of the road films have not progressed beyond the cinematiclanguage of the Seventies and we are proud about the national awards that wefetch every year, notwithstanding the fact that no Bangla movie has beenaccepted in the competition section of Cannes Film Festival for about 20 yearsbecause our content is clichéd and style dated!But we are happy.Because we don''t need to think beyond mashimas, pishimas and the kakimas so longthey patronise us. We don''t want to. We don''t want to experiment on form, onstyle or on content. Lest the mashimas desert us, or the stereotypical filmcritics get critically personal about having tried to violate Ray. Doingsomething which Ray hadn''t done is blasphemy. We are Bengalis, mind you!