Nightmare in dreamland

Is Hindi cinema destined to die? There is no simple answer but I agree with writer Susan Sontag who said: "Cinema''s 100 years seem to have the shape of a life cycle: an inevitable birth, the steady accumulation of glories and in the last decade of the 20th century the onset of a humiliating, irretrievable decline."
The issues surrounding the virus that has affected the industry are known: the growth of TV, the DVD market, the high cost of tickets etc.All these reasons are valid. However, no one is talking about the real problem: That the content is stale. While the consumer has evolved, the product has remained frozen in time. Anything which has the stamp of yesterday will not work. The world has become an exciting and challenging place to live in. Everyday we see the advent of some new gizmo. Unless our films begin to echo this excitement in our plots and techniques, the audience is not going to bite the bait. And why should they when they can have it all for very little cost in the comfort of their homes?
What we need to do as entertainers is ENTERTAIN. And what we are doing right now is trying to sustain some old dead horse in the hope that it may just get up one more time and run. The future of Hindi films lies with those filmmakers who look at films the way they look at life -- from a standpoint which is unique in its perception of the world and not old and tried and tested. Let''s be introspective and stop believing in destiny or luck. It''s the Consumer who is King, not the producer, the director or the star.
When people ask me whether our cinema too, like other art forms, will die with a whimper, my answer is no. As long as Indians love listening and telling stories, cinema will live and so will all those brave filmmakers who dare to tell stories which subvert the market. The present leaders must understand that they are but one generation out of many still to come.
All fundamental changes had a crisis at their roots. Our focus should be on realising our potential, restoring trust and increasing professionalism. If filmmakers can do this we may just about begin to end this ongoing nightmare which has devastated Mumbai''s dreamland.
(The writer is a filmmaker)