National award-winning documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan says despite being honoured by the government for his work, he is struggling to show his documentary 'Jai Bhim Comrade' on national channel Doordarshan.
Patwardhan won a Special Jury Prize at the National Awards, 2012 for 'Jai Bhim Comrade' and a National Film Award for Best Non-Feature Film in 2004 for his movie 'War and Peace' (Jang Aur Aman), which traced the development of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan.
'Jai Bhim Comrade' has been shot for over 14 years and is based on a real incident where 10 Dalits were killed by the police in Mumbai in 1997. It has won various awards in India and abroad but Patwardhan wants the movie to reach to the masses rather than gathering awards in festival circuits.
"The only positive point of winning National Award is that I could go to the court and ask that why Doordarshan, national TV channel, is denying me the right to show my film? The government gave me an award... So, they can't say it is a bad film. They also can't say it is a good film but people shouldn't see it," said Patwardhan on the sidelines of Dharamshala International Film Festival.
His three-hour-long film was screened here today and received a loud applause from the audience.
The filmmaker also shared that this is the only movie for which he didn't have to fight for a censor certificate.
"I am very lucky that I got a censor certificate for this movie. I got it only because I have fought with them for every other movie I made. This is the only movie for which I didn't have to fight... Probably they gave me one because they were scared that I will embarrass them again. But we are still fighting it to be shown on TV because when it is shown on TV it reaches to everyone," he said.
After years of hard work gone into making this documentary, Patwardhan said he is now going to take a break from filmmaking to concentrate on showing the film.
"I usually don't think about a story till I start making it. I am not desperate to make a movie now. I need a break... I have been working on this project for long. Now, I have to do the work of showing the film. I think there is no point of making a film if it just sits in my room. So, I have got to make sure that it has been seen by a wider audience," he said.
Besides Hindi, the film has been made in Marathi, English, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu.
