The following news appeared in screenIndia recently. It made me feel may be all are not lost. Cinema still exists some where out there. I salute Mr. Priyanandan and wish him success. Read on-
Dream come true
The child labourer who made the country’s best feature film of 2006 is worried by all the adulation. “My films are intensely cathartic to me and I doubt if they will ever make money. But I can’t negate myself and do some crass commercial film for my family’s sake... and after the publicity, I can no longer expect people to give me a manual job in my village anymore, either,” says Priyanandanan, 42, whose Pulijanmam won the national award announced on Tuesday.
The son of a poor village sculptor of wooden elephants (“Elephants were all that my father sculpted all his life”), Priyanandanan discovered theatre early. “My heart was always in theatre, and I used to beg for small roles in plays staged in the village during festivals and then moved on to bigger roles. The more I came to know plays, the more I knew that there was a whole lot more to it than commercial nonsense. I started seriously reading up everything that I could get in the libraries on theatre, went around meeting the top playwrights and directors in Kerala and finally began directing plays on my own,” he says.
Though the small bands of serious theatre lovers applauded, he was jobless and running up huge debts – even his tiny village home was attached. So films were a natural progression. For seven years, Priyanandanan struggled under some of Kerala’s eminent parallel film makers, until he picked up the courage to try out his maiden film, Neythukaran (The weaver), running from one producer to another and being shown the door. Neythukaran fetched three awards, including the national award for best actor.
As Kerala toasted Priyanandanan, few knew what he had been through to make that movie even after it got off the block. “Producers walked out half-way, actors, technicians and everyone else had to forgo their charges – friends had to beg and borrow to rent theatres for a single screening, because no one wanted a non-commercial movie,” he says.
Even after Neythukaran fetched rave reviews, Priyanandanan kept trudging all over for months for someone to produce Pulijanmam. “I was told, advised, even sneered at for lugging a script and a concept that would never make money. Until a producer, M G Vijay, told me to go ahead.”
Priyanandanan is unfazed that not many people would be watching his national award-winning movie. “I would be more than happy if at least one movie house in one district each shows it just once a day. I would be content if it is watched by a few people who know and believe in the strength and potential of movies,” he says.
He is already doing the spadework for his next movie, based on a popular Malayalam literary work, Yakshi. He expects that too to be no cakewalk, especially after even the Kerala government’s promised subsidy of Rs 4 lakh for his Pulijanmam has somehow got stuck.
