Good Films Lack Money

My recent visit to Kolkatta spurred me to watch some good Bengali cinema.

I asked around some of the known folks to recommend me some good films.

Mind it ,I told them that I do not understand any Bengali and I wanted the films to have English subtitles so that I can get the hang of the dialogues! But alas I could find only one film with those. I was thoroughly disappointed.

I saw some really great films like Antarheen, Allo, Ballyganj Court, Anshumaner Choobhi, etc... Now my titles may be wrong here so please ignore it, but I guess you got the hang of what I saw.

The films were made on very poor budgets and the cast kept on repeating the costumes and the location hunt was not that great. The art direction was the pits but the actors were great, the direction was good, the story was the essence of the film and overall the look was very soft.

The way we get to see garish costumes in Hindi flicks, the strong dance sequences

in South films, the biggg budgets of both the south and Bollywood films was lacking here. There were no very Big stars like Rajnisir or SRK or BigB here. There the budgets are going more towards these pricey artists, hence they could save on that there in Bengal. But still the films lacked a lot of money.

The main impact was the music of the films. They rely more on the soulful numbers from the past and the beauty of Rabindra sangeet is seen throughout.

I wished I could understand what the words said but hardly anything could be understood by me.

The biggest repertoire of Indian films is with the FTII in Pune and I sincerely hope that they come out with subtitled films for the rest of India to appreciate the beautiful cinema we have here.

Karnataka produced the largest number of films this year beating even Bollywood, but they too need to stop this protectionist attitude towards their own and start promoting other good films. Only big banners have the clout to get more eyeballs and we loose out on some real good cinema, so I hope these big banners buy the rights of such small cinema and promote that too. God bless them all.