By Hindustan Times
There was an endless debate on Delhi being India’s movie capital. In fact, when the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) was allotted an everlasting venue at Goa’s Panaji in 2004, it broke so much many hearts, hearts that were singing for brand new Delhi.
The other day, after I bumped into Shankar Mohan, Director of IFFI, on the ongoing Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival, he accused me of being a type of who had vociferously advocated Goa. I had not, of course, with the exception of having said (and written) that IFFI should have an everlasting location, and never be a wandering event, because it have been for an extended time, coming to Delhi another year.
Given the debate, it was not surprising that Cinefan must have organised a two-day seminar on Delhi being the country’s new movie capital. While it'll not was all that a big task to shift the centre of cinema from Lahore to what was then Bombay post-partition, it's under no circumstances going to be as easy to move Bollywood into the bureaucratic-government Delhi.
The Cinefan seminar attracted a host of celebrities, including Shekhar Kapur, Imtiaz Ali, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Bobby Bedi, Marco Mueller (who now heads the Rome Film Festival), Nina Lath Gupta (Managing Director of the National Film Development Corporation of India) and a few Ministers.
Though, Delhi have been the setting for some significant Bollywood films (Rang De Basanti and Delhi Belly among others), and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra could also be planning a studio within the capital city, there has been no heartfelt, sustained campaign some of the speakers to seriously change Delhi right into a cinema hub. Delhiwood didn't seem to be catchy enough.
Neville Tuli, co-founder of Cinefan and head of Osian’s auction house, felt that Delhi could complement Mumbai, not take over. In a flamboyant speech typical of him, he said that Delhi should not try to be the driving force. The town can make use of its wonderful cultural heritage, but should make certain that movie-making didn't ruin the historic sites. This was a standard problem.
Years ago, one remembers Ooty rising in revolt against the wear due to film units, which dirtied the pristine great thing about the southern Indian mountain resort, even damaging one of the monuments there.
Speaking within the same vein as Tuli, Producer Bedi while admitting that Delhi was a better place to shoot with streets less crowded than they were in Mumbai, felt that India’s capital city could never be an alternative to the metropolis by the Arabian Sea.
Kapur averred that Delhi had the similar problems as Singapore, and lacked creative talent. “Maybe Delhi needs one of those stimulus that comes from Mumbai’s underworld and drinking dens”, he quipped.
In a standard sarkari style, Delhi’s Minister, Kiran Walia, said she can be happy to look Delhi because the celluloid centre, but “I hope nobody asks for precious land”.
All that is fine, but many, many Indian producers are actually budgeting for shoots in locations as exotic as Prague (the hot film with the similar title is an example), Switzerland, Malaysia, New Zealand and so forth. These look extremely alluring and Delhi could hardly hope to be a match.
And keeping this in mind, stories are being set outside India. Ashish Shukla’s Prague takes its lead players to the Czech capital and presents a visually arresting canvas. Forget the plot, forget the performances and forget how believable the incidents by themselves are. Shukla is on a touristy trip and that's about all there's to his work.
I wish that in place of these needless debates on Mumbai-vs- Delhi, serious efforts could be made to make better cinema. The cash that may have gone into setting Prague in Prague might have been used to get well writers and actors. The tale can have taken place in Mumbai or Madurai or Delhi or Dhanbad or Kolkata or Kharagpur. There has been nothing Prague specific in it.
(Gautaman Bhaskaran is covering the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival in New Delhi)
