‘People should watch and encourage parallel cinema’

There were several hurdles in front of Sidharth Siva and Musthafa during the shoot of the film Ain, the national award winning film from Kerala. At Thenhipalam in Kozhikode, where most of the movie was shot, the crew battled out insufficient funds and austere filming techniques to come up with a critically-acclaimed movie nationwide.

Though it won the national award, Musthafa, the lead actor in the movie, is not happy about the reception of the movie in theatres. The movie was released at Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur at the Kerala State Film Development Corporation theatres earlier this week.

Musthafa feels the crowd flow to the KSFDC theatre in Kozhikode was lower than expected. “We expected more crowds in Kozhikode. In Thiruvananthapuram, there has been a satisfactory turnout. No one has anything bad to tell about the movie. The movie was allotted to the bigger capacity Kairali theatre rather than Sree Theatre in Kozhikode and there has been a word-of-mouth rumour that many people are not watching it. I think it is the problem of how people perceive a parallel film,” he said.

“Several directors and actors had called me to congratulate about the work we had put in to make the film happen. It is a simple story and I have heard only positive comments so far.

We felt that people will have an eagerness to know what there is in a national award winning movie. The movie should have released in a theatre in Kochi also so that those who are related to film field can also watch it in theatres,” he says.

However, he believes that KSFDC has done a good job to help the parallel cinema by deciding to release the movies that are non-commercial. “We approached several private theatres but none showed any guts to release it. The move by KSFDC is actually helping lots of parallel movie directors and I think several youngsters are now taking such movies. I think there should be a better policy for non-commercial movies. We found it hard to complete the shooting itself because of non-availability of producers to fund the project.

So the marketing was minimal,” he says. “The difference between commercial and non-commercial movies is very large. While the money helps, the response of the audience encourages us to take more such projects. The real boost should come from the public,” Musthafa adds.