Celebrated movie gets short shrift

KOLKATA: It can easily be called the curious case of screening issues for Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s ‘Asha Jaoar Majhe’ (AJM).
The National Award winning film that got its maker the Best Debut Director at Venice International Film Festival hasn’t been given a screen at Nandan 1. There is an evening show at Nandan 2, which holds 165 viewers to Nandan-1’s 800, and nowhere close to it in terms of viewing experience.
Why is Bengal, which flaunts its support for good cinema, following a different narrative in reality?
“Without using a single dialogue, the film brought alive Kolkata. It reminds me of the works of Ray and Ghatak,” said Soumitra Chatterjee. For Sharmila Tagore, this “delicious and delightful” film makes “the world seem a better place”. Goutam Ghose has called it ‘real cinema’. Actor Abhay Deol believes it’s “one of the most original films to have come out of India in recent times”. Udaan director Vikramaditya Motwane has said, “If you believe that Indian cinema needs to change, please support this film.”
Surprisingly, most Tollywood bigwigs are silent. Anindya Sengupta, assistant professor of film studies at Jadavpur University, said, “Veterans like Soumitra Chatterjee who have the erstwhile Film Society movement sensibilities and younger cinephiles are praising the movie. But important industry names, who take to twitter-praise after a movie’s release, are silent. This casual indifference is symptomatic of a hollowness which constitutes current Bengali cinema.”
Sengupta would rather have honest criticism than superficial industry reactions. “The audience support is such that next week, we are getting six shows,” he said. None of them are at Nandan 1, which is screening Roga Howar Shohoj Upae, Belaseshe and Jurassic World. Apparently, the format of AJM played spoilsport. Yet, it was in the same format that it was screening at Nandan 1 during the Kolkata Film Festival (KFF). “During KFF, our film was screened in Digital Cinema Package (DCP) format. But I’ve been told that DCP format won’t work now. We have to convert it to the CUBE format. That will take around Rs 80,000. This is too expensive,” the director said. Since Sengupta wasn’t looking at screening at Priya and Navina that support CUBE, this expense wasn’t viable a single Nandan 1 show. He had suggested that Nandan pay for the format conversion and recover the money from screenings before going for profit-sharing. “Had the money not been recovered, we wanted to pay the balance,” the director said.
The suggestion was overruled. Director Buddhadeb Dasgupta insisted that Nandan 2 isn’t equipped to screen AJM. “The glitch has to be solved. This film needs support from media and government. Aditya has already recovered the costs by selling the film abroad. Supporting this film will encourage other independent filmmakers,” he said.
Director Prabhat Roy — member of Nandan’s screening committee — said he liked AJM. “But technical problems from the maker’s side created issues. Besides, we can’t remove a film that’s doing well. Based on a film’s making and storyline, we decide which auditorium to screen a film. Commercial viability is also important to run Nandan. We can’t select films that get only 40 viewers,” he said.
Surprised with screening issues, director Sekhar Das referred to how Satyajit Ray had said that Nandan will screen good films that don’t get a release elsewhere. “Today apparently, only money-spinners are encouraged,” Das said. Despite its National Award, Pradipta Bhattacharya’s ‘Bakita Byaktigoto’ also had to settle for Nandan 2. Seeing history repeat itself, he said, “If a good film like AJM doesn’t screen at Nandan 1, we should stop calling Nandan an ‘art film theatre’.”