Kasaravalli backs moratorium

It’s time we set things right: Kasaravalli
Times of India

Kannada film director Girish Kasaravalli on Monday minced no words in his support of the sevenweek moratorium on non-Kannada films in Karnataka. “The Kannada film industry has been controlled by outsiders for the last three decades. It is time we set things right,’’ he said here.

Kasaravalli is shooting his latest film titled Achala, at Kotekar Beeri on the outskirts of Mangalore.
On the state of the Kannada film industry, he said, “People who control the industry are only bothered about profits, not about Kannada or its culture.” He believed that the Kannada film industry was hit so badly due to the patronage that non-Kannada films enjoyed here.

“It happens nowhere in India except here where the Kannada films have to compete with five different language films. So, the competition is not just between Kannada films, but with Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, English and Malayalam movies as well’’. According to him, in the other states, say in Tamil Nadu, the film industry there competes with just Hindi and English films. Likewise in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Moreover, he noted that while there were about 3,000-odd theatres in Tamil Nadu and 2,700 in Maharashtra, there were only about a thousand theatres in the state. “There aren’t enough theatres here to exhibit films.” Asked about the increasing presence of non-Kannada actors in the Kannada film industry, Kasaravalli said, there was no comparison between picking up stars and technicians from outside for Kannada films and releasing other language films here. “We may pick up non-Kannada stars but what is made is a Kannada movie after all.’’

When raising the point about the making of quality films, Girish gets aggressive. He observed that moratorium was not about quality. “My film Dweepa was adjudged the best film in the country. It was not allowed to be released’’. “If they are worried about quality, why have Shyam Benegal’s 15-odd films not been released? What are these people against moratorium talking about?” He asked, how could quality films and the Kannada film industry compete against soft porn like Girlfriend and Jism. “Quality films which have won rave national and international reviews are rotting in the cans.”