'Kalaya Tasmai Namaha' directed by Chandrashekar Srivastava did not get a good response because the junta felt that the film was quite slow. In an effort to bring back the audiences, the director has cut 25 minutes from the film which includes two songs 'All Kalaya ah Allah' and 'Naanu Enu Alla' and quite a few scenes. "I watched four shows of my film along with the audience and each time I saw people walking out whenever these two songs appeared. So I thought it is better to remove them. Also, I removed several scenes which captured the love between the hero and the heroine. Though I thought everything was relevant in the film, what's the point if the audiences didn't enjoy all the sequences," explains Chandrashekar, whose film is now 2 hours 10 minutes long.
Though he wanted to explain the philosophy of love and then come to the climax, he realised that people did not have any patience to sit till then. "So I had to find a solution," says the director, who personally did not like to cut anything from the film.
"I am sort of the director who would want his audience to watch the film the way I would like to watch it, which is a risky process. But I had to edit my film only because of the producer as his survival is more or less dependent on how the film was portrayed.
Moreover, these days hardly any producer comes forward to invest in such kind of cinema.
The edited version came out on Saturday. Ultimately I had to appeal to the mass audiences who take some time out to watch our films," he concludes.