The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : ‘Adult cinema and not children’s films should be redefined’

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Monday, Nov 16, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

‘Adult cinema and not children’s films should be redefined’

Staff Reporter

— Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

Expert views: Filmmakers Gulzar and Vishal Bharadwaj at an open forum during the ongoing 16th International Children’s Film Festival in Hyderabad on Sunday.

HYDERABAD: Do not try to define movies for children. They are not different from adult movies and all that an adult knows needs to be known by the child too, said Gulzar, famous lyricist-director. On the contrary, it is the adult cinema that needs to redefine itself, he said.

Participating in the Open Forum on the topic - ‘Is it time to redefine children’s films?’ - at the 16th International Children’s Film Festival here, Mr. Gulzar felt that adult film makers needed to shed their condescending view of children. “Don’t look down upon children. What right do we have to preach them? After all, we have not given them a better Hindustan than we ourselves got,” he said.

It is the “speech” or the way a movie is told for children of different ages that need improvement and not the theme as such. The media centre at Prasad’s Multiplex was packed with audience eager to listen to Gulzar speaking in his fluent Hindustani.

“I read Munshi Premchand first time when I was at school. When I read it again in college, I understood it in different light. There is Shakespeare for children, and there is Shakespeare for adults. Subject doesn’t change, but treatment does,” he said.

The legendary director whose film ‘Kitab’ is a classic example of exploring the world through a child’s eye view, felt there was a lot of difference between films “about children” and those “for children”. The former were for adults while the latter, for children.

To a question about the need to educate the child, Mr.Gulzar said there can’t be education without entertainment. Director Vishal Bharadwaj, who also participated in the forum, felt that there was a need to consciously make films for the children as they are forced to depend on the mainstream adult movies for entertainment. The preachy tone assumed while working on children’s books and movies needs to be reviewed.

German filmmaker Uta Hartmann-Beth, another participant, spoke about the universal problem of lack of distributors for children’s films. We can’t talk about children’s films without talking about economy, she said. Cinematographer-director and three-time national award winner Virendra Saini acted as the moderator.

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