No other platform to exhibit content-driven films: Rajit Kapur on film fests

National Award winning actor Rajit Kapur, who is also the jury member of Asia Pacific Screen Awards, says that there is no other platform other than film festivals to exhibit content-driven films.

On the fourth day of the 7th Jagran Film Festival (JFF) here, the actor was at the Siri Fort auditorium for a seminar for aspiring filmmakers.

Expressing his opinion on why content driven films don't mint money at the box office, Rajit believes that it is because they don't have any other platform.There is "no exhibition of content driven films elsewhere so they may or may not be seen. Only TV shows such movies, unless there are some cinema halls for them but I think slowly the lines are beginning to blur", Rajit told IANS.

The actor has films like "Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda", "Sardari Begum" and "Train to Pakistan" to his credit along with the hit TV show "Byomkesh Bakshi" and several plays.

Holding a session on finding money for films, the actor screened few presentations by MPA on the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), an international cultural initiative of the Brisbane City Council, Australia which honours and promotes films, actors, directors, and cultures of the Asia-Pacific region to a global audience. Rajit is a jury member there.

"It helps everybody, because you are exposed to different kind of cinema, world cinema, which normally you would not see in regular theatres and sometimes you don't get to see them on TV either so here you are getting a chance to see films you may never see again," said the 56-year-old.

The actor also hailed the festival for being able to promote regional cinema and the fact that the platform is travelling to smaller cities and reaching more people as well.

In the session, Rajit highlighted the importance of having cultural diversity in the filmmaker's idea to be able to get nominated.

The fourth day of the festival opened with Bengali movie "Cinemawala" by Kaushik Ganguly followed by Omung Kumar directorial "Sarabjit" which drew an immense crowd, classic movie "Mere Mehboob" and "Cholai".

While Rajit conducted a workshop for aspiring filmmakers, the festival also showcased films like Raja Krishna Menon's "Airlift", Shyam Benegal's "Nishant among others.

With Cuba as Country Focus the five day festival also screened films such as "Hanoi Tuesday 13th" (Spanish), "Lucia" (Spanish), "Between the Lines" (German), "Someone Else's Shadow" (French) and "The Chunk And The Whore" (French).

The festival will traverse from Delhi to 16 more cities like Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Agra, Meerut, Dehradun, Hisar, Ludhiana, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Raipur, Indore, and Bhopal.

--IANS

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