NFDC chairperson Neena Gupta has her own take on the releases: “We are aiming to give these films a new lease of life under the banner Cinemas Of India.
They have been lying in a storehouse for years but now seven films co-produced by NFDC, including a few masterpieces such as Shyam Benegal’s poignant partition drama Mammo, besides the winner of the Venice Film Festival Award, Dance of the Winds, may finally get a proper theatrical release.
Some of the films were made almost a decade ago and all of them faced distribution issues because of financial constraints. But now, even though the films are being re-released, not everyone seems happy about it.
Says Rajan Khosa, whose film Dance of the Winds also won him the Best Director award at the London Film Festival in 1997, “There has been no publicity or planning for the film’s release.
I have been asking them to release more prints. No one seems to even know that the film is coming out. I was told just two days ago that it was being released. When I approached them with suggestions, I was told to keep out of it,” he complains.
On the other hand, Shyam Benegal says he wasn’t even told that Mammo was being re-released. “I had no idea that Mammo was being screened. But if it is, I’m glad. Of course it has been released earlier, but at that time there were no multiplexes.”
NFDC chairperson Neena Gupta has her own take on the releases: “We are aiming to give these films a new lease of life under the banner Cinemas Of India.
We have films like An Ode to Lost Love by Madhu Ambat and Shyam Benegal’s Mammo, which will be shown in PVR theatres in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. We have more such films lying with us and we hope to release them also very soon. We are scouting for more partners at the moment.”
j_shilpa@dnaindia.net
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