15 June,2011 06:45 AM IST | | Dhara Vora
With a line up of this year's biggest award-winning Marathi movies, Dadar Matunga Cultural Centre's Chitrapat Mahotsav guarantees two hours well spent for the cine enthusiast
Other than being Bollywood's hometown, Mumbai occasionally boasts of showcasing films from across the globe. However, closer home, quite a few brilliantly-made movies from the Marathi film industry go unnoticed. With the aim of providing a platform for these movies, the Dadar Matunga Cultural Centre has organised its annual Chitrapat Mahotsav. In its fifth year now, the festival has an interesting list of multiple award winning movies including Sumbaran, Platform and Mee Sindhutai Sapkal.
"Though Marathi movies win the National Awards every year, cinema halls in our city show movies during the matinee time and run them for a maximum of one or two weeks. We showcase these movies so people who really appreciate Marathi cinema can get a chance to watch them if they have missed these shows during their short run in cinema halls," explains Vidya Dhamankar, one of the festival organisers.
We caught up with Veena Lokur, producer-director of Platform ufffdu00a0 "My film is about an upper middle-class girl named Shivani, who adopts two abandoned girls from a railway station and dedicates her life to raising them up. Everyone talks about female foeticide but I wanted to talk about the girls who are not killed but are abandoned. Most of them spend their entire lives on roads while some of them are sold. I wanted to highlight their plight forward through my movie," she said.
She spoke frankly about the hurdles she faced being a Marathi film producer, "The Hindi film industry is obviously huge. But today movies produced by the biggest banners are the biggest flops while Marathi movies have won several National Awards. Sadly, they don't enjoy commercial success. Marathi movies are more subject-oriented and the audience takes home something with every movie. My previous movie, Mission Champion won several awards but didn't have a good run in theatres. However, I got a great response from audiences at film festivals like these. Such festivals play an important role in showcasing movies with a different subject, which has a particular audience. Today, Marathi cinema is finally getting a lot of attention and our efforts are being appreciated."
Bindiya Khanolkar, producer of Mee Sindhutai Sapkal echoed similar thoughts. "Cinema hall owners should support us by providing evening show slots. Most women choose to watch our movie but show timings are either at 8 pm, when they would be putting their kids to bed or at 11 am, which is inconvenient. We have won four National Awards for this movie. So if the quality of Marathi cinema is improving, the government should help us too," she believes. Speaking about her multi-award-winning film, "Wherever we showcased our movie, be it a preview in Bandra or in Spain, people could not stop crying. They were unable to imagine how someone like Sindhutai could survive (she is 62 now) despite enduring such hardships. Women who were contemplating suicide in real life have actually connected with us and said that after watching the movie they have changed their mind."
At Dadar Matunga Cultural Centre, 122A, JK Sawant Marg, near Ruparel College, opposite Mumbai Glasswork, Matunga (W). CALL 24304150; TIME All shows at 5 pm; ENTRY Passes at the venue (Rs 250: members/ Rs 300: non-members/ Rs 75 for a single film)
