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I went to the book launch of an English book about Tamil cinema’s history, written by a movie producer. The whole auditorium including Tamil Nadu’s leading directors and press reporters were waiting for the lead actor to arrive in order to release the book. This single scene depicted Tamil cinema’s current condition.
I am happy that an English book is released talking about Tamil cinema and its history. However, we are in a situation to re-analyze everything that Arandhai Narayanan worked hard to create. The position of Tamil cinema industry has changed a lot and we are facing crisis now.
Reporters like Arandhai Narayanan, film news Anandhan, and Vamanan knew their duties and excelled in their industries. However, the cinema industry is still unaware of the importance of the history about cinema. Every year, at least a few movies should be selected and they must be protected using document protection program. Nimai Kosh, M.P. Seenivasan and Jeyakandhan directed a movie called ‘Padhai Theriyudhu Par’. A classical movie taken by top writers has been buried already as there is not even a single print of the movie. Now, several successful movies by MGR and Shivaji Ganesan are also dying because the older films are destroyed for reusing the film and chemicals are used for this purpose. In this situation, there is a danger that several movies will die and go unnoticed in the future if no steps are taken. Tamil cinema industry churns out more movies every year compared to all the other film industries. However, we don’t have a team or committee to protect the movies that have been taken. It is high time to create a protection committee to protect prints of films.
History is not merely about names, dates and straight forward details. History actually talks about experts who created history and the view will be unbiased. Several books have been released about cinema artists, but not all of them are unbiased and honest. Only a couple of books like Arandhai Narayanan’s book about NSK and Chola Nadan’s view of K.P.Sundarambaal can be classified as historical books important for the Tamil cinema history. The rest are all completely biased and written just to get attention. At least actors are having their share of history with the books that praise them all the time. However, books about directors and music directors can be easily counted with two hands.
Historical view about Tamil cinema is in crisis and the condition of original movie reviews is much worse. A friend of mine commented that movie review can be good only if good movies are released. It can't be denied that Tamil movies all come under the entertainment category. However, even for those movies, there are no classic reviews. Contemporary theorist Slavoj Zizek is conducting an elaborate research on the psychological aspects prevailing in Hollywood movies. Thelus Kathari twins have created guidelines for researching popular movies. In Tamil cinema industry, a few reviewers like Theodore Baskaran, Venkatesh Chakravarthi and Yamuna Rajendran are presenting reviews in a very different perspective, but that is not enough. The reviewers are not playing their roles both inside and outside the cinema industry.
Chelian and Visvamithran within the Tamil cinema industry introduce well acclaimed international movies and this has considerably created a change in attitude with the Tamil cinema industry. However, even these people are not courageous enough to tell the truth about Tamil movies that are being released. These people work for the film industry and it is unfair to expect them to be unbiased when they review a movie.
We can be pretty satisfied that new Tamil movies and some of the well known international movies are taking up written format as the screenplay is being printed. If this is developed much further, we can inculcate a good mindset among the audience about Tamil cinema.
Just like the way we feel proud of the history, we should also learn from the history. We should review us constantly by comparing our performance with the performance of other movie industries in the world.
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