Diabytes
Borrowed Masala
In a country where some regional film industries manufacture upto 150 or more films a year, the Oriya film industry, with its dozen or less releases per year, looks like a minnow among whales. But for the Oriya people it is a significant medium which they hope would reflect their society, their images and their nuances. With Oriya literature and arts scrambling to assert their identity, Oriya people obviously turn to films to at least bring a little respite.
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D N Singh
In a country where some regional film industries manufacture upto 150 or more films a year, the Oriya film industry, with its dozen or less releases per year, looks like a minnow among whales. But for the Oriya people it is a significant medium which they hope would reflect their society, their images and their nuances. With Oriya literature and arts scrambling to assert their identity, Oriya people obviously turn to films to at least bring a little respite. To view things positively, in the past few years there have been some films that won acclaim and awards at the national level. But it has been just a stray straw in the wind. Seen realistically, the predominant characteristic of Oriya filmdom is its mindless mimicry of the Mumbai formulae without even the faintest echoes of Oriya-ness in it.
Never before in its 60 year-old history had the Oriya film industry sunk to such abysmal depths. With quality having taking a back seat and taste degenerating , the average Oriya movie is today a pale replica of Hindi masala. The craze to copy Hindi films manifests itself in the increase in the number of films produced. But except for the technical expertise most of the films are out to discard the regional character of Oriya cinema and such makers of course include the big guys like Raju Mishra, Prashant Nanda, Amiya Patnaik, Ravi Kinagi(who in fact earlier used to rake the shackles) and the greenhorns in the field.
The trend of ribaldry with a religious nomenclature stemmed from the makers like Patnaik and Mishra, who have for long encashed on the Jagannath cult. But now they seem exhausted. Even a film maker of Sisir Mishra's calibre (Smita Patil starrer 'Bhigi Palkein' in Hindi) had come up with 'Bastra Haran ', a jittery cocktail of Hindi potboilers woven together and all neatly wrapped in holy cloth.
Except for a few changes in last three or four years, there is also the torture the audience has to go through of seeing the same old faces on screen over and over again. Like overworked Romeos, Uttam Mohanty, Bijoy Mohanty, Mihir Das, Aparajita are those who still refuse to shift from their old cocoons.
One of the brightest moments came in 1984 when Nirad Mohapatra's master piece 'Maya Miriga' catapulted itself to the helm to bag the national award. Then it was success in a series by the film maker Manmohan Mohapatra who won awards for a number of films but they were all, more or less, stock for the juries as the films never stood the test of cinema goers.
Given this sorry state of present-day Oriya commercial cinema and its mindless imitation of Hindi cinema, it should be left to the good film makers to heave Oriya cinema back on the rails and pose a challenge for the 'ayaram and gayaram' brand of producers.
In a country where some regional film industries manufacture upto 150 or more films a year, the Oriya film industry, with its dozen or less releases per year, looks like a minnow among whales. But for the Oriya people it is a significant medium which they hope would reflect their society, their images and their nuances. With Oriya literature and arts scrambling to assert their identity, Oriya people obviously turn to films to at least bring a little respite. To view things positively, in the past few years there have been some films that won acclaim and awards at the national level. But it has been just a stray straw in the wind. Seen realistically, the predominant characteristic of Oriya filmdom is its mindless mimicry of the Mumbai formulae without even the faintest echoes of Oriya-ness in it.
Never before in its 60 year-old history had the Oriya film industry sunk to such abysmal depths. With quality having taking a back seat and taste degenerating , the average Oriya movie is today a pale replica of Hindi masala. The craze to copy Hindi films manifests itself in the increase in the number of films produced. But except for the technical expertise most of the films are out to discard the regional character of Oriya cinema and such makers of course include the big guys like Raju Mishra, Prashant Nanda, Amiya Patnaik, Ravi Kinagi(who in fact earlier used to rake the shackles) and the greenhorns in the field.
The trend of ribaldry with a religious nomenclature stemmed from the makers like Patnaik and Mishra, who have for long encashed on the Jagannath cult. But now they seem exhausted. Even a film maker of Sisir Mishra's calibre (Smita Patil starrer 'Bhigi Palkein' in Hindi) had come up with 'Bastra Haran ', a jittery cocktail of Hindi potboilers woven together and all neatly wrapped in holy cloth.
Except for a few changes in last three or four years, there is also the torture the audience has to go through of seeing the same old faces on screen over and over again. Like overworked Romeos, Uttam Mohanty, Bijoy Mohanty, Mihir Das, Aparajita are those who still refuse to shift from their old cocoons.
One of the brightest moments came in 1984 when Nirad Mohapatra's master piece 'Maya Miriga' catapulted itself to the helm to bag the national award. Then it was success in a series by the film maker Manmohan Mohapatra who won awards for a number of films but they were all, more or less, stock for the juries as the films never stood the test of cinema goers.
Given this sorry state of present-day Oriya commercial cinema and its mindless imitation of Hindi cinema, it should be left to the good film makers to heave Oriya cinema back on the rails and pose a challenge for the 'ayaram and gayaram' brand of producers.
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