It is deplorable that the release of noted Sri Lankan film-maker >Prasanna Vithanage’s film, With You, Without You, was cancelled at a Chennai cinema because of threats. Mr. Vithanage is one among a small group of Sri Lankan film-makers making films that deal, sensitively and sympathetically, with the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. This film was an official entry to, and received widespread appreciation at, the International Film Festival of India two years ago, and fetched the “Best Actress Award” for its lead actress, Anjali Patil.
Of late, Chennai has been witnessing incidents of increasing cultural intolerance, where virtually any group is able to stop the screening of films by threatening violence even as theatre managements, the police and the government stand by mutely. How much longer is it before this very fascist tendency spreads to theatre, art exhibitions and other forms of creative expression? How much longer before any artist’s work can suffer from an arbitrary ban? Do those who are trying to forcibly ban Mr. Vithanage’s film, without even having seen it, realise that they are harming the very cause they claim to champion?
We condemn this tendency and call upon film-makers, artists and all champions of free expression to raise their voices against and resist this dangerous cultural intolerance. Chennai must not be allowed to become the capital of cultural censorship.
Dhritiman Chaterji, Sadanand Menon,
Venkatesh Chakravarthy
Chennai/Hyderabad
