Respect for regional cinema key, says noted filmmaker Jahnu Barua

PUNE: Acclaimed filmmaker Jahnu Barua said Indians must accord more respect to regional cinema, if films across various Indian languages are to gain an identity.

Barua was speaking during the inauguration of the ninth edition of the Asian Film Festival at National Film Archive of India (NFAI) on

Law College Road

on Monday.

Barua also spoke on the history of

Assamese cinema

, his days as a student at Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), and the identity of Indian and Asian cinema.

Barua recalled an incident when he withdrew his film from a film festival abroad, and how he was threatened with a boycott. “My film was selected in a section called Third World Cinema, because the film and the filmmaker were Indian. I immediately withdrew my film, because art is art and cinema is cinema. It has no first or third worlds. They then told me that they would boycott my films upon withdrawal. But I did not go there. In subsequent years, they discontinued that section,” Barua said.

“Overall, Asian filmmakers should stop borrowing concepts from the west. We have millions of stories all over the country, which are waiting to be told. That is a distinct advantage we have over western cinema, which is suffering from a dearth of stories,” Barua said.

Also present at the inauguration was filmmaker Gajendra Ahire, who was honoured for making 50 films in just 15 years. The festival opened with the Turkish film ‘Zer’, directed by Kazim Oz.

The festival will run till December 30 and will feature 29 films from 10 Asian countries. That selection includes a panorama of Indian cinema across various languages — Marathi, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, etc — and a focus on Iran, with four films from that country. A retrospective on Israeli filmmaker Dan Wolman has also been featured by organizers.