Censorship has no place in a democracy, says filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Globally acclaimed filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan believes it’s high time scrap censorship was scrapped. Speaking at the Mumbai press club, during promotions for his film Pinneyum (Once Again), he said, “In a democracy, censorship has no place. Censorship works only in dictatorships, not in democracy. I am opposed to any kind of censorship. I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do and what not to do.”
The film, which cast Malayalam actors Dilip and Kavya Madhavan, also has Marathi actor Subodh Bhave in lead roles. The movie release also coincides with his fifty years of film-making.
On piracy, he said there should be severe punishment for those who commit piracy. It is because of a lack of stringent punishment that people indulge in releasing films in the internet even before the official release of the films, he said.
The filmmaker, honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2014, also expressed reservations against terming non-Hindi Indian movies as regional cinema. “Every film is a national film. Nobody called Satyajit Ray a Bengali filmmaker. Globally, Bollywood films have been identified as Indian films, which is totally wrong. Bollywood doesn’t represent Indian films. It is sad that so many good regional films don’t get the recognition and adulation they deserve as they get overwhelmed by Bollywood films. In one of the international film festivals, a foreign filmmaker was really surprised to know that we make good non-Hindi movies in India. It is very common to identify Hindi cinema for Indian cinema,” he said.
Talking about his latest film, he said that it is for the first time that his film is getting released outside Kerala. It will be released in all metros and major cinemas. “This movie is about human relationships, crime, family, love, the human craving for material wealth while basic human values being sacrificed,” he said.
