The festival is high in quality in terms of both cinema and audience.” This is what Bangladeshi filmmaker Golam Rabbany Biplob, who is in the City for Bangalore International Film Festival’, has to say.
Through his cinema, Biplob has been representing the consumerist society in Bangladesh. He has been showing how small, grassroot-level communities grapple with a booming open-market economy.
He says that while inequality among classes exist all over the world, grassroot communities bear the brunt as they seem to have no connection with the growing consumerism.
All over the world, when cinema is reeling under the challenges posed by internet, Biplob notes that in Bangladesh, cinema is undergoing a transition in terms of technology.
“Film exhibition and filmmaking is changing technologically. Moreover, youngsters are coming into film-making and dabbling with digital tools. But the bigger issue is that there is lack of investment in cinema.”
Biplob hopes that the audience for Indian vernacular cinema in Bangladesh grows through collaborations with Indian directors. He says, currently, it is non-existent. Hindi and Bangla films already have a booming market in Bangladesh. So with effective planning, the market for this be widened.
He says filmmakers like Rithwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray had brought in a different narrative to cinema.
Biplob, who has curated and attended film festivals all over the world, feels that a proper professional base is the need of the hour for a film festival. From script to screen and reel to the real, cinema acts as an escape route from harsh realities.
If stories relating to Partition and illegal immigration form a rubric for movies, it will be able to resolve crisis and conflict.
He says that as cinema has its own language and style, directors need to express what they want to address in its most communicable form as otherwise, films may turn out to be a failure.
“One should know that in a year, all 100 or 125 films may not reach artistic expression or make money,” says the seasoned filmmaker, who is currently working on a project.