THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Noted filmmakers Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Shaji N Karun have welcomed the decision to stage the 25th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) at multiple venues. Though the move was meant to prevent heavy crowds from gathering, the filmmakers said it will benefit cinema and viewers.
In Shaji’s view, films are linked to culture and knowledge. Hence, film festivals have a responsibility to disseminate knowledge which will not be possible if they have a fixed venue.“If it is accessible only to a limited set of people every year, we can’t say the film festival has served its purpose. Knowledge is is not location-specific,” said Shaji, who was the first chairman of Kerala State Chalachitra Academy.
According to him, the manner in which the film festival is staged needed to have a relook. “Good films come when there is a large audience. It is complementary. We need to think of bringing in a new set of people capable of creating a body of work and creating a generation which can recognise good films,” said Shaji.
According to Adoor, it will not be practical to allow mass gathering of audience during a pandemic situation. “There are few alternatives. Otherwise the festival has to be cancelled,” he said. IFFK, which started out as a hopping festival, was given a permanent venue in Thiruvananthapuram when Adoor became the chairman of IFFK in 1999. “My logic was that IFFK will be identified with a particular place when it has a permanent venue.A festival with a permanent venue has the nature of developing there,” said Adoor adding, “The multiple venues planned was only due to Covid With all the infrastructure, Thiruvananthapuram is best suited to host the festival”.