Listed under a column called ‘awards received’ are seven names, Kerala State Award coming twice in them — for Best Film and Best Second Actor 2013. The first of the awards came in the December of 2013 when Sudevan brought his maiden movie to the International Film Festival of Kerala. He had walked then, outside the Kairali Theatre complex, an unassuming bearded man, merged into the crowds rushing to watch film after film across the movie halls of Thiruvananthapuram. To those that identified him as the director of Cr. No. 89 and asked him questions of his filmmaking, Sudevan would tell about his small beginnings, his producer-less movie making packed with no famous names. Today he stands outside the Sree theatre in Thrissur, as his film is moving onto its second week of screening there, still finding it difficult to believe that an award winning film like that could actually get a theatre release in Kerala.
“I was thinking if it ran for four days, it would be luck, but then at least 50 people came on an average every day. It is a sign that people are happy to come to theatres to watch ‘award’ films,” says Sudevan. The Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC) had taken the initiative to run his film and Unto The Dusk by Sajin Babu in three theatres across Kerala.
The award films, as Sudevan calls it, have for long, suffered a stigma of being dragging or boring, easily putting the layman movie goer to sleep. But something seems to have turned their luck around, for Sajin Babu, is watching in glee, his movie run into the second week at three theatres. “When Sudevan and I got to screen our movies, I wondered if at least 20 people would turn up. You need that many for the theatres to allow a screening,” says Sajin. And then he watched in happy surprise, the theatres fill up to 80% in the first days. There were more queues for Unto The Dusk than some of the new commercial films that released last week.
People travelled to the nearest districts to visit the only three theatres the movies were screened. Roy Chacko who came from Thiruvalla to Thiruvananthapuram says he knew and liked Sudevan’s movies, and watched both Cr. No.89 and Unto The Dusk. A movie buff since childhood, 54-year-old Roy says he has great hope for Sajin. This love for parallel cinema is not entirely new. There was a time Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Kodiyettam ran for 100 days.
National-award winning film critic C.S. Venkiteswaran says, “The success of the KSFDC release of the films of Sudevan and Sajin only prove that there is an intelligent, discerning and self-respecting film audience in Kerala. Actually they were always there, but the distribution network and television have been systematically keeping them away from good films, and lording them over with trash. This is a wakeup call to them, to give a fair chance to award winning and art films. What has been happening is that the exhibition screens and broadcasting channels are colonised by vested interests who systematically kept out films made by our own youngsters and thereby denying the audience the right to watch the best of films made in their language.”
The reception these two movies got has come as a wave of hope to makers of independent cinema. Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, director of award winning Oraalppokkam has been travelling with his movie across Kerala as part of a venture called CinemaVandi organised by the Kazhcha Chalachithra Vedi. He says, “Some of the independent filmmakers have now come together, promoting and helping each other. And it’s certainly a good change. It’s created an awareness that people do come to theatres to watch these films. But in place of three theatres, we should have 15 or 20. This is only a beginning.”
