M A I N   N E W S

“Apaharan” of punctuality
Amar Chandel
Tribune News Service

Panjim (Goa), December 1
Should the screening of a film at an international festival take place 45 minutes behind schedule? The organisers of the 36th International Film Festival of India must ask themselves this question, considering that the unthinkable happened last evening during the premier of “Apaharan”.

Reasons for the delay? The lead actors of the Prakash Jha film, Ajay Devgan and Bipasha Basu, came that much after the scheduled time in true tradition of Bollywood stars. The film could have been easily started on time and the actors welcomed midway, but that was not to be.

Invitations for the show had been distributed so liberally that the doors of the halls had been closed 30 minutes before the show, much to the annoyance of regular delegates and mediapersons. Then the 70-minute wait began.

By the time the actors sauntered in, the audience was so worked up that it booed and heckled them out of the hall after a stay of barely a minute.

The screening was stopped a few minutes later on the plea that someone was surreptiously filming it on his videocamera. All with such cameras were told to leave.

As if that was not enough, there came another announcement that even those with still cameras should vacate the hall. Those with film cameras instead of digital ones were told to leave because the organisers said that it was not possible for them to “distinguish between a digital camera and an ordinary one”.

This brought howls of protests from many invitees who were carrying simple cameras, considering that no such announcement was made before the start of the film.

The film itself is an above-average fare, graphically portraying the utter lawlessness in Bihar where ministers and MLAs indulge in kidnappings and criminals operate from jails.

Ajay claims he did not agree to work in this Prakash Jha merely to win awards. “I don’t believe in any of these so-called popular wards,” he emphasises, “you work in a film only to do justice to your work. You see everything in totality. Script comes first. Also, the character that you play must excite you”.

He also does not agree that the character he essays in this film is negative. There are several shades to it, he points out. Nor does he feel that “Apaharan” glorifies the evil of kidnapping.

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A film fest has to move in two directions. If there are extremely slow, experimental films, there have to be out and out commercial films too. The latter category here is manned by the premier of such masala films as “Deewane Huey Pagal”.

But since it is such films that sell like hot cakes, they attract tremendous crowds, hampering the more serious films.

Even serious feature films have few takers, the plight of non-feature films can well be imagined. One cannot make a living out of making such films.

One maker who has had such bitter experience is Arun Khopkar. He has made short films on many artistes. Being shown here is his “Pravahi”, which is about Alarmel Valli, one of the greatest exponents of Bharatnatyam.