Odia cinema for a long time had been languishing in need of original storylines. hardly any story captures the struggles and joys of the state, hence this failure to captivate local audience
Isha Isita
In a country as linguistically and culturally diverse as the Indian subcontinent it is unfeasible and irrational that one single culture industry no matter its form and language should bear the strength to represent in appropriate nuances the ethos and pathos of each community and section.
Looking around, one can very well say that today the cultural industry of India where consumption of media is enormously through the medium of cinema that is hugely dominated by the Bollywood industry which can at its best only showcase the lived realities of a few particular sections of the society.So it is important we shift the focus to regional film industriesfor its local productions in local languages that can tell truly and tell with passion the tales, tears and smiles of the local milieus.
An ideology that no doubt the Odia intelligentsia understood in its heart when the nascent state was struggling to carve it’s cultural identity amidst a host of external and internal challenges when it set out to portray the Odia life and the Odia psyche on screen through ably crafted films like Manika Jodi (1963), Amadabata (1964), Malajanha (1965), Matira Manisha (1966), Shesha Shrabana (1976) or Maya Miriga (1984).That phase of Odia film productions is considered as the Golden Era and most films of the time used to be based on highly appreciated literary works.
But with lack of appropriate government or intellectual infrastructure and lack of appropriate direction, it soon lost its way to the wasteland of creating commercially viable remake films borrowed from successful industries. The film creators earned huge money but the state without any visual representation of its culture languished in ignored and ignorant darkness because the films made with passion and purpose had to fight for the barest requirement of having a day’s screening in a reputed hall.
As a consequence, the film industry drove out a major part of its audience and lost any intellectual support it ever deserved. As a result, Diana Sahu writes in a sorrowing article in the Indian Express “Hall of worry for Ollywood” (in 2023) about how even good and original Odia content is today struggling for a screen space in a multiplex, losing to Hindi and Telugu films due to lack of audience.
Odia cinema for a long time had been languishing in need of original storylines with most of the movies copying frame by frame successful Bollywood or South Indian hits and hardly any story that captures the struggles and joys of the state, hence this failure to captivate local audience.
Any successful film industry has three diverse streams to create their story ideas so that they become authentic representations and representatives of the culture they are native to.
The first one is the vast repository of cultural, mythological and folklore stories that every Indian community is the proud inheritor of, a source aptly milked by Kannada, Tamil and Telugu Industries in their beginning with films like Maya Bazaar(1957), Thiruvilyadal(1965) and Sri Venkateswara Mahatyam. Even today films like Kantara(2022) continue to blend folklore, mythology and contemporary issues to take their culture to a wider audience.
Unfortunately, Odia films though attempting commercially watered-down mythological melodramas have been unable to exploit in any form whatsoever the rich cultural and historical heritage of the Odisha State, hence one finds the negligible mention of it in any national or international cultural forum.
The second is the transcreation of literary greats to the cinematic medium the pillar on which the great edifice of Bengali cinema is based on with international greats like Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen adapting literary maestros like Tagore and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and taking it to global audience in films like Charulata (1964), Naukadubi (1947)and Khandhar(1984).Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) based on Sunil Ganghopadhay’s novel of the same name making an impact on the Cannes platform tells us that literary classics still have the tenacity to convey the pathos of human existence to a global audience.
Unfortunately, many literary greats of Odisha like Gopinath Mohanty, Surendra Mohanty or Shantanu Acharya never found a creator worthy enough to take their masterpieces to a national or international arena.
The third and the most needed one is the creation of actually original stories which tell the life struggles and life joys of the people of the region and hence can strike an emotional chord with the region. An exemplar of such a line of storytelling is the Malayalam movie industry which has produced original stories like The Great Indian Kitchen,Manjummel Boys and All we Imagine as Light which are not only earning international accolades but also influencing other industries like the Marathi and Hindi movie Industry to adopt similar themes. Although Odia film industries did see a few such original classics like Maya Mriga (1984)or Indradhanura Chhai (1993) they are too few and have too long of a gap between them to make any impact on any kind of platform.
But the sincerity and originality of the industry can only be bolstered if the state gives them ample cause for motivation through incentives, infrastructure and sensitive policy frameworks. The Andhra Pradesh government has been giving out the prestigious Nandi Film awards for brilliant film, theatre and television ventures in the Telugu language with prominent media personalities serving as juries, while the state of Gujarat gives up to INR 75 lakhs as assistance and INR 5 crore as incentive on winning prestigious national or international awards to Gujarati Films and Karnataka grants the benefit of subsidy to 125 Kannada films to foster the growth of their industry. But the Odisha state is lacking in any such incentive or initiative to bolster the industry’s already languishing status.
As aptly elucidated by Sanjoy Pattnayak in his introduction to Odia Cinema@90 “While qualitative growth of the film industry with a well-oiled film distribution network is mandatory, what is even more crucial is to have a state government determined to bring in positive and viable changes in its film sector”. He therefore suggests a fourfold plan of having a competent film policy, a five year action plan that is outcome-oriented, an independent corpus and a decentralized committee with members having diverse expertise to oversee action and implementation.
Along with original creators and state support, the industry lacks the intellectual advocacy extended to other film industries with hardly any authentic research being done on the industry and with hardly any dedicated and critical media coverage of its products. One of the major reasons behind this gaping lack besides the film industry slowly deeming itself unworthy of such attention is the lack of film festivals to draw adequate media attention to the right spaces and the right stories.
Recently, film fraternities like the Bhubaneswar Film Circle are waking up to this indispensable necessity and putting in efforts to create nascent festivals which can in the future be the supporting aide that the industry requires to establish itself on a wider stage.
(The author, a student of English Literature at Christ University, Bengaluru is currently an intern with Bhubaneswar Film Circle. Views are personal.)
