Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Encourage Indian filmmakers too' that was published in Newsband

Encourage Indian filmmakers too

The 85th Annual Academy Awards reminded us that America was indeed the most powerful nation on the planet. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, about one of the country’s architects, led the race with 12 nominations. Argo received seven nominations. And Zero Dark Thirty, an account of the CIA-led operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, ended up with five nominations. Life of Pi had an impressive tally of 11 nominations. In the end, Ang Lee’s film won the most awards of the evening — four, including one in a major category, for Best Director. For the night’s biggest winner was a film sourced from a Canadian novel, shot in India, Taiwan and Canada, and completed on computers across the world.

One upset was Jennifer Lawrence’s win (Best Actress, for Silver Linings Playbook) over Jessica Chastain, who was considered the front-runner for her performance in Zero Dark Thirty. It is sad that the woman who dedicated years of her life to bringing down Osama was not found worthy of an Award.

Zero Dark Thirty was one of the best made films of the year, and the only reason it got snubbed really well was because of its controversy. The academy is always known to play safe, and politics is a huge concept in Hollywood, and it’s more likely that they considered picking the star of a feel good film than the star of a controversial film safer.

Some perfectionists had rejected awards - George C. Scott and Marlon Brando rejected the Oscar awards and Aamir Khan rejected all awards in India. They may feel that awards are manipulative. But, Art needs appreciation. Artists can't be ignored without appreciating their skills in the form of awards at different levels. Awards in one or two categories may be felt as not worthy, but not all awards.

It is great to find that movies having connection with India have been winning Oscar Awards since the last four years. It is left to be seen as to when an Indian movie will get Oscar Award.

One Indian scholar says, “The script writer of` ‘Life of Pi' is obviously not well versed in Hindu mythology. The grown-up Pi tells the interviewer in a scene that there are some 33 million Hindu Gods. Actually, the number is 33 crores and that makes it 330 million!”

There are many socially relevant films made even in India in local languages and we have film makers who have even more complex ideas thoughts and actions than an American film depicting military/diplomatic rescue mission. We should make sure that our own artistically superior film makers get the limelight they deserve as they are in a position to bring about positive change in the society by virtue of their thought-provoking films.