45th IFFI-Literature has not its place in Cinema and News-Items both are Likely to form baseline for Cinema

In a brainstorming session on ‘have newspapers replaced literature as a source for cinema’ at 45th IFFI , panelists opined that although a trend for picking up newspaper-headlines as raw-material for movies has emerged of late, yet the literature has not altogether vanished from the cinema. Initiating the discussion, senior film critic Ratnottama Sengupta put forth the common perception that cinema today was losing seriousness after it started borrowing less from the literature. She however termed the discussion as the first such interaction between the film critic circle on one hand and media as a whole on the other. She said, it’s a paradox that film criticism, most of the times talks about actors and their lifestyle but remains silent on the hurdles, commercial viability and infrastructure available to the cinema. ShiladityaSen, a senior film journalist expressed his concern over lack of aesthetics and cinema language in the regional films. He said, there are two awards for ‘original screenplay’ and for ‘adapted screenplay’ that would enthuse filmmakers to write their own films. Odiafilm director SabyasachiMohapatra structured his film AdimBichar on SahityaAkademi winner but found it difficult to release it in theatres because it was seen as serious film, he said