Don’t label our work ‘parallel cinema’: Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Bengaluru: Expressing his distaste for the term ‘parallel cinema’, veteran Malayalam filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan stated that filmmakers like himself and Girish Kasaravalli are not making parallel cinema. “We are just making cinema. I think other filmmakers – those making commercial films – need a qualifying term for their work,” he said.

Gopalakrishnan was speaking at a panel discussion on the topic ‘From Page to Frame: The Literary Soul of Indian Parallel Cinema’ on Saturday, the second day of the Book Brahma Literature Festival, held at the St John’s Auditorium, Koramangala. Other panellists were celebrated Kannada filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli and screenwriter Archana Vasudev.

Kasaravalli recalled an incident from the screening of his 1986 film Tabarana Kathe at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan. The anti-establishment film is a strong criticism of the government. At a crucial scene towards the end, then-President Ramaswamy Venkataraman walked out of the screening without saying a word. “But that was it. If I were to make a move like that now, I would be put in jail,” the 74-year-old filmmaker said.

Editors in multiple languages?

Pustaka, a publishers’ conclave, held outdoors in a leafy setting, hosted discussions on pressing topics.

An afternoon session focused on publishing in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), featuring Marudhan, a Tamil writer and editor, and M B Usha Prathyusha, a Telugu publisher. They argued that AI still falls short in creativity and originality but acknowledged its usefulness for translation and generating promotional campaigns for books. Moderator Kirupalakshmi Krishnan raised a larger concern: who should get the credit for an AI-generated manuscript, and who should take the blame if it contains factual errors — the machine, the prompter, or the publisher? Both speakers agreed that, for now, it’s unclear who should be attributed.

The following session was especially timely, coming after Kannada author Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, won this year’s International Booker Prize. It explored what English publishers look for when selecting South Indian works for translation.

On the panel were editors Moutushi Mukherjee, who worked on Heart Lamp, and Rinitaa Banerjee. Moutushi is drawn to narratives that transcend current events, feature strong female characters, or are rooted in an “authentic” voice. Rinitaa values stories that are “unique but universal in appeal”, and that linger in the memory of native speakers — the kind one instinctively recommends. Both noted a shortage of sci-fi and horror submissions from regional languages and said they would like to see more. At present, they receive sci-fi in Bangla, and horror in Gujarati, Bangla, and Urdu.

From the audience, poet and journalist Pratibha Nandakumar asked why leading publishing houses can’t have editors representing multiple languages, noting that native speakers might be more appreciative of manuscripts in their respective language. Rinitaa responded that, in her view, a manuscript’s evaluation does not depend on where an editor comes from, and that there is no discrimination in what editors read and evaluate.