Hyderabad: The concluding-day programme at Krishnakriti Festival 2016 saw a call to do away with censorship, which was backed by a sizeable audience during the panel discussion: ‘So many cinemas: Do filmmakers have to be responsible to their audience?’
Among the six panelists was director and actor Amol Palekar. He said, “India should do away with censorship.” Palekar spoke in detail about why we need to handle censorship in a more mature way. “When TV serials are not censored, why do we need people to keep a tab on films?” he asked.
“In India, censorship is dangerous,” he further elaborated. “Many believe that what is shown on screens gets translated to real life. So, in the name of morality and cultural values, artistic liberty is curtailed. Take movies these days, you can have a violent scene playing, but when it comes to depicting a tender scene between a lesbian couple, people have a problem. Cuss words are beeped out in films. Even if the cuss words are contextual, that isn’t allowed,” he stated.
What started off as a conversation on censorship took a turn towards ethics in films.
Palekar said, “Keeping all these issues in mind, the first rule of ethics should be to do away with censorship. Everyone needs to follow ethics. If films are inspired by literary works, the author needs to be given importance. We do not see that happening often. Audience too needs to follow ethics, they shouldn’t go around downloading films. Piracy needs to be stopped and that’s where the ethics of the audience comes into play. But the most disturbing behavior of the audience is to stop the screening of a film. That is unethical,” he said.
Dr Pawan Manvi, who worked in television, spoke about TRPs on the small screen. “Programmes these days are made keeping in mind the advertisers. Nobody cares about the audience. No wonder then that the programmes are ridiculous and obnoxious. Makers display the mentality that they don’t mind people cursing their show, as long as they watched it,” he said.
Actress and film producer Elahe Hiptoola spoke about the need for “subtle secularism” in films. “I grew up in a country where secularism was taken for granted. And my films have an attempt to secularise things in daily life. Take the example of the film Iqbal. The story was about this disabled boy who was coached by a former cricket player. When one looks at the film, the first thing that stays with you is this inspiring story of a boy who is fighting against all odds... But later on, it sinks in that he is from a particular community. That is the sort of subtle secularism that we need,” she explained.
Professor Hariharan Krishna, from Mahindra Ecole Centrale, spoke about how, when cinema arrived in India, those who were associated with it were considered “modern”. Founder and director of the River to River Florence India film festival, Selvaggia Velo, was the moderator of the session.
Professor Samuel Berthet’s talk on oversimplification was well-received. Berthet said it was time we stopped saying the audience wanted trash.
“We need to stop that. We can’t say that the audience wants trash and then go ahead and give them more trash. That needs to stop right now. We also need to stop the oversimplification of films.”
