Kochi: Film director Kamal on Saturday said neutrality as a political position was a lie, and that artists were duty-bound to take sides with those safeguarding human values.
“There is nothing called a neutral position. I believe it is the duty of an artist to stand with truth and humanity,” he said in response to a question after giving an emotional talk on his life and reading at an event organised by H&C Readers Forum here.
The director, who also chairs the Kerala Chalachithra Academy, was recently hounded by the BJP for his alleged misconstrued stance on police action against those who protested playing the national anthem in cinema halls during the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) held last month.
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The BJP and the Sangh Parivar had upheld his Muslim identity in a disparaging manner, and a leader even asked him to go to Pakistan.
The veteran director on Saturday chose to steer clear of topics pertaining to that, but only said that his Muslim identity got cemented when he got admission at Christ College, Irinjalakuda, under the category reserved for Muslims.
“I was a very poor student and although poet K. Satchidanandan was my teacher, I wouldn’t understand a thing of what he lectured in the first year of my pre-degree.”
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Having spent his childhood at Mathilakam near Kodungalloor where he was initiated into reading literature by a multi-faceted librarian, Kamal tried penning for the theatre while in college.
While his father, a landlord of sorts, despised progressive thought, he became friends with Leftists and even ultra-Leftists of the time, thanks to his uncle Padiyan’s circle of intellectuals. Over time, as he expanded the horizons of his understanding in the initial days of his stay in Madras, since renamed Chennai, he veered towards the ideological Left.
“But there has always been a streak of nostalgia in my films.” He had seen Muthukulam Raghavan Pillai, actor and scriptwriter of the first Malayalam talkie Balan , wait outside the post office days on end for his pension as an ailing artiste. “Stock-shot Varghese chettan , editor of films like Balan and Jeevitha Nauka , also had a similar fate, leading a life of penury. Ditto with pioneering editors of other language film industries as well. This was probably what nudged me to take a look at the sad life of J.C. Daniel, the leading light of Malayalam cinema through the film, Celluloid .”
Kamal also recalled that D.W. Griffith, who profoundly influenced his concepts of film-making, also had a tragic past.