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‘Mumbai is the toughest place for a regional filmmaker’

He has to contend with big budget Hindi films that spend on TV promos alone the kind of money he would need to make three Marathi films, Amol Palekar tells DNA.

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Amol Palekar is looking forward to watching Kaminey, which he hasn’t been able to catch because of the shutting down of cinemas in Pune, where he lives, due to the swine flu scare.

“I like Vishal’s films, he tells gripping stories,” says the filmmaker, ready with his next, Samantar. In addition to directing yet another script penned by  his partner Sandhya Gokhale in Samantar, Palekar is also donning the greasepaints after a good 24 years. “It was for Ankahee (1985) that I had performed all three roles — actor, director, producer — last,” says Palekar who as an actor was known for his common man turns in the Basu Chatterjee-Hrishikesh Mukherjee films of the ‘70s, like Rajnigandha, Chhoti Si Baat and Golmaal

Samantar, the story of a 60-year-old Keshav Vaze, played by Palekar, who in spite of achieving a lot of wealth, feels the pinch of loneliness in his autumnal years, is made in Marathi and will be released in two prints: one with and one without subtitles.

Palekar intends to take the film beyond the usual Marathi-speaking audience, and with Reliance’s Big Pictures distributing the film, Palekar feels freed from the headache of marketing it. “Marketing is not one of my strong points. My focus is more on making a good, sensitive film.” 

Palekar believes that his films have a devoted audience. “Otherwise, making Marathi films is quite a task, as we also have to compete with Hindi mainstream films. Mumbai is the most difficult place for a regional filmmaker to survive. A big budget Hindi film spends Rs7-10 crore only on television promotions. I can make as many as three films in that much money,” he says.

For Palekar though, marketing of his films has been more of a personal effort. He remembers how he physically carried prints of his Dhyaas Parva, or Kal Ka Aadmi, to different cinema halls in Maharashtra. “We would ask the theatre owner to play it for at least two weeks, and except in one case, we had to increase the playing time in all theatres because people wanted to watch the film.”

With films like Kairee, Anahat and Dhyaas Parva, Palekar has managed to deliver quality regional films over a steady career. “See, we keep talking about the business of big budget Bollywood films, but we all know that the success rate of these films is abysmal. And even when a Hindi film does well, it’s nowhere close to the kind of money that, say, a Rajanikanth-starrer makes.

With 90 per cent of mainstream films flopping, it’s clear that a big budget and great marketing are not the only two requisites for a film to do well.”

Here, Palekar gives the example of A Wednesday. “Even without high decibel marketing, A Wednesday did well after its release; it gradually grew in numbers as time passed. In comparison, a film that is focused on getting in maximum people in the first weekend will achieve only that, and see a decline in audience thereafter.” But Palekar agrees that a good film, if not marketed well, could get lost amidst the biggies.

With Samantar, Palekar has the opportunity to not just cater to his loyal audience, but also go after the non-Marathi speaking junta, with Sharmila Tagore for company in the film. “Sandhya (Gokhale) and I could think of no one else with that kind of beauty and poise to play the role of Shama. I just picked up the phone and asked Sharmila if she would be my heroine.

She replied that as I had invaded her cinema long back, it was her turn to do the same with me,” smiles Palekar, remembering his foray into Bengali cinema in Mother, where he starred opposite Tagore.

Recently, Palekar was on the jury at a film festival in Thiruvananthapuram and he came away impressed by some of the films he saw. “Some of the short films screened were exemplary,” he says, adding that among the Hindi films he saw recently, he loved Luck By Chance. “Zoya Akhtar made a sincere film. Now, I want to watch Kaminey,” says the veteran.
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