Things change but not the love of movies- Raadhika

Chennai

Chennai: Kollywood has changed in many ways. There is a huge influx of young directors, actors and technicians, but the unfortunate truth is that many of them are quickly forgotten. In fact, movie making has become a Herculean task since the disparity in return on investment is huge, and everyone today has to be on their toes because resizing and downsizing has become the norm. There are too many movies being produced, but there is too little time for people to see all of them. Earlier, everything was paced evenly and there was a lot of brouhaha over stars.

Today, that mystique has somewhat diminished. Films were produced over months back then and those on the sets had time to be friends with one another. People like the late AVM and Rama Narayanan used to help so many people who came from villages. They were taken into production houses and given the freedom to learn and train without worries. Today that kind of trust is hard to come by. Unlike in the past decades, it is much harder to be an actor today because even a small mistake is picked upon and magnified in public. We have great talent even today, but everyone is being pushed to deliver within a short time.

The ‘inside story’ is that the film industry today functions with much back biting: things were never like this in the past and this is very sad. Technology has done away with B and C centres: the leisurely way in which movies travelled across districts and small pockets in interior Tamil Nadu is fast vanishing.  The one thing that remains unchanged is cinema’s position as a tool of entertainment and social change. That remains unaffected as the theatre going experience among urbanites too. A lot of things change, but some thankfully, remain the same.

As told to Bhama Devi Ravi